Yea... about my decisions in the my last post...

I did end up getting sick and stayed home from work. I slept for most of the day trying to fight off the fever I had. But after finally waking up and feeling a little better I decided to look around at other tools for learning Japanese. What harm could that do, right? I was planning on taking a few days off from the others anyway.

I came across TextFugu. People were raving about how good it is. It is basically an online text book that has a bunch of Anki decks and worksheets. The first Season (which you could say is a chapter) is free. I started it at about 6 and I finished it about an hour and a half ago. I immediately bought the lifetime membership.

Why? Because I really like the teaching method and delivery. The Kanji lessons are similar to Remembering the Kanji and better since it teaches you the actual meanings AND readings (Remembering the Kanji only teaches you 1 possible and sometimes not all together accurate English meaning making it easy to understand what the Kanji is but not how to read it in Japanese). The delivery method is light and playful. It has a feel similar to this blog, in my opinion. The author has an approach to teaching the same way I would teach someone Spanish or any language for that matter.

But, one thing that had me sold? Actual reading and writing lessons. The reading and writing lessons in Rosetta Stone are sub-par. In just the few hours I studied TextFugu today I feel my confidence in reading hirigana greatly improved. Another thing, there is the promise of learning informal Japanese. I don't think Rosetta Stone will ever touch that.

For now I'm going to shift gears to TextFugu completely. I'm not abandoning the others just yet. I will continue with Pimsleur next week since I just do it on my drive home anyway. But for now I'm putting Rosetta Stone and Remembering the Kanji on hold.