My story and books recommendation

Palamecia

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Hello,
Today I decided to join the forum because I would like to tell my story. I never talked about this to anyone, and I would like if other people could listen and maybe give me their opinion about it.

Let me introduce myself first.
I'm 21 years old, I live in Canada and my primary language is French. I have learned the basics of English in high school, then I improved my vocabulary by using the Internet, video games, and television with subtitles on. Today, I'm using (almost) exclusively English when I'm reading or watching videos. I know that about 54.9% of the Internet is in English, and only 4.3% is in French, so it was very important for me to learn this language.

Presently, I am living with my parents because I didn't go to college and I wasn't sure what to do in life.
Right now, I don't have a job, I'm in depression and I've lost interest in many things I liked before. But it will get better, I'm sure.

Now what brings me here ?
Well, I have one interest that makes me want to pursuit my life: Japan.
I simply find the country, culture and language so fascinating.
I never traveled in my life and would like to go there at least once and maybe I could decide to live there after that, who knows ?

I know there are a lot of possible issues, I read about that. I do know it would be a very, very difficult journey for me. But I'm just at the beginning of my life, I have plenty of time to reach my objectives, I need to stay positive and find myself some goals to reach. Living and working in Japan would probably be my life-time goal.
I read about English teachers and translators going to Japan and I thought "hey, maybe this would be a very interesting career opportunity".

So, I think the first step would be to learn Japanese while working in some low-paying job (because that's all I can get right now). This would be my first goal. What would you think about this ?

Unfortunately for me, Japanese teachers seems to be unavailable where I live, except at university level (which was not recommended by many people).

I thought I could use a mix a learning books and the Internet to teach myself at least the basic to be able to get more ressources later.

In general, people seems to recommend to get at least this book:

- A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
- Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary

and then

- Minna no Nihongo Textbook + Minna no Nihongo English Translation and Grammatical Notes
Or
- Genki Textbook + Genki Workbook + Genki Answer Key

Would theses books good to start with ? I'm at the very beginning of my learning process.
 
I'm no pro but at least I know the basics. So as usual as it is, learn the kana first.. Don't buy books related to kanas (hiragana and katakana) as it is easy to memorize, will take you about a week to do that. Then try to search some simple vocabularies over the internet for you to write in this alphabets. After you've memorized the kana and done practicing writing it. You may now start basic grammar and some hundreds of kanji, then after that, I'll now recommend you to buy books. But sorry cause I don't know what's a good book for studying, though I'm pretty sure many of the members here will help you as well.. Good luck! :p
 
Thanks for the reply :-)

Yes, it makes sense to learn the hiragana and katakana first I think.
I read somewhere that young kids do use both hiragana and katakana to express themselves before learning the kanji.

Might sound like a good plan.
 
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