downloaded duolingo for japanese. i know it's not perfect and won't make me fluent or anything, but my brother used it for like 6 months or so before his japan trip and he had no issues getting around and making light conversation. i want to go to japan at some point so i figure i should probably do that.

spent like an hour on it today, maybe i can do that while i'm walking or just on my breaks at work.

@beardalaxy if you learn japanese, please download NP21w and XEiJ
https://stdkmd.net/xeij/
https://simk98.github.io/np21w/

you can then experience hordes of untranslated 80s/90s japanese computer games, definitely also get a PC-88 and MSX emulator (openMSX) too for the older days.

@beardalaxy the other tip I see people using to learn Japanese is to watch subbed anime with the subs off, especially anime targeted at younger demographics with "simpler" Japanese.

There was some obscure kids anime me and some friends passed around because it had character designs we liked and some of the nyaa comments were stuff like "nice upload this is great to learn Japanese with" on the raw upload before it was subbed so keep that in mind.

@sendpaws yeah that is a really good idea, i was thinking about maybe doing that with some ghibli films. i took chinese in high school and, funny enough, the only time i've ever watched mulan was in chinese xD that's a great way to learn though, pretty much everyone says that helped them learn a language no matter what it is. hell, that's practically how i learned english and it's my first language. lots of video games where you had to read lots of text, before full voice acting existed. it's much easier to tie it to something you enjoy doing because you'll keep doing it even if you don't fully understand it.