You pay based on how far you’re going.
I read somewhere that there are train passes that you can buy. I think one was named Suica or something. You can charge them with money and then you can just ride any bus or train. The cost is charged from that card afterwards. I think you can also add the Suica card to Apple Pay.
So you will be there over halloween?
I tried that, but I much prefer the haptics of real paper and writing with an actual pen. Also, I really like the look of ink on paper. Of course, there are still cases when a tablet is just the best. For example, when annotating PDFs.
pro tip: you can still write ugly if you use a fountain pen
Yes, but for my own notes it's not a problem if the handwriting is ugly. I still like to write by hand, even if my handwriting looks pretty messy.
That’s a good point. I think you'll be fine most of the time, but there are still some cases where you have to write manually. For example, when filling out registration forms.
I am selective about what shows and movies I watch. They have to be at my language level. It is important that, with my knowledge of the language, I can understand what's going on. Otherwise, it will just be frustrating. I don't necessarily have to know all the words and grammar because, over time, I'll automatically pick things up and improve. For me, the whole point of immersion is that it does not feel like learning. That's how I stay motivated. So, if a movie is too hard to understand for me, then I just stop watching it and look for something else. As I improve, I will be able to watch more and more movies. That's how I learned English, and I hope it will work for Japanese as well.
Whenever possible, I avoid looking up words and try to deduce their meaning from the context. If a word is used very frequently and I still don't understand it, then I look it up with an iPhone app called "Nihongo". It does have OCR search (it can read Kanji from photos), you can draw Kanji with your finger, use radicals, or write the pronunciation with hiragana or romanji and I almost always find what I am looking for. I am sure there are similar dictionary apps for Android as well.
I don't use flashcards because they are boring. If a word does not come up frequently enough for me to remember it, then I probably won't need it anyway.
This is how I do things, and it may not work for you, but I hope that you'll at least get some ideas of how your learning can become less frustrating.
Thank you! The pages you linked are really useful to me.
If you are not sure yet if the language is for you, I would try to get a feel for it with Duolingo. It seems to be the best free app.
If you are confident that you want to learn the language, and you have some money to spend, then I have some more recommendations:
I quite like this course because you see how you get better every day. Also, over time, the lessons speed up, so you end up learning to speak at a normal conversational speed.
I found this course to be very well-structured.
I use this book to learn the Kanji because I had trouble remembering them just by using learning apps. As a free alternative, you may also want to take a look at KanjiDamage.
I have also tried out multiple other Apps and courses, including Renshuu and Jalup, but none of these quite worked for me.
Of course, I would also try to watch as much Japanese TV and videos as possible, play Japanese games and listen to Japanese music. Just so your brain is constantly confronted with the new language. You will pick up lots of phrases and get a good feel for the language without much effort.
Were you using simplelogin.io, which is part of Proton? It is actually possible to reply or send mails from the aliases you create there. The feature is called reverse-alias.