Hellooo

Hi everyone, my name is Elliot, I'm 21, from the UK and really want to learn Japanese, and along the way find out more about the culture and history of Japan in general. The ultimate goal is to do some travelling over there in the future, and to be honest it's also just something productive to do - I hope I can turn it into a hobby (and shamelessly give my CV a much needed boost).

It would be great to make some friends online to share this looong journey with - say hi if you're also a beginner

At the moment I've pretty much got Hiragana down, and I'm going to go ahead and start learning katakana now - it seems like a good idea to get these two sort of out of the way as early as possible. After that though I'm not totally sure of where to go, especially with the huge amount of resources available! I am going to do a 10 week evening beginner's class in September however, so hopefully I'll get some good speaking / listening experience there!

I'm on my summer holiday from medical school right now (I go back in September), so I want to try to sort out a routine / method / roadmap for learning before that so I can actually handle learning Japanese and medicine at the same time... I've spent too long using "medicine" as an excuse for not pursuing other activities heh (and I want to learn to program too... welp)

Sorry for this wordy post, but I look forward to (virtually) meeting you all! Any beginner tips would be appreciated

Hi Elliot, thanks for your intro and welcome to the forum! There's plenty of info in our Nihongo subforum, don't hesitate to start a new thread if you have any particular question.

Enjoy your summer holiday!