Oh lol I didn't even notice that typo. But hey, even.. I was at a welcoming assembly and a teacher for a Japanese class accidentally introduced herself funny like ... "douzo yorokoso" or something xD it happens..
Ohh, IkuAki wanted to do more vocab as well : O I have a handful of that to share ^_^
オイ！　メルさんはバカな外人ではありませんよ！

Hmmm.. well right now I'm learning colors and animals. I use YesJapan to help me study along with other study aids and sites. I know numbers and years, but not counting things like round things or flat things, and I know some body parts.
There are a lot of words that I need to memorize for my whole YesJapan lesson thing.
That's so cool. *o* I am part Japanese (along with Filipino, French, and Scottish) but I only know English. We are going to Japan in April; so I am trying to cram a bit to be able to get around comfortably. :P The biggest drawback to my learning is not having someone to teach me. It is very hard for me to teach myself things. @_@
I don't know. I know Iku desu is basically introducing yourself, but they said that "Iku to moushimasu" is a more polite way of introducing yourself.

オイ！　ヒヒッ。　 Oi! reminds me of Spirited away, and the three heads bouncing. .-.

I always thought that Hajimemashite was Hajimimashite, and I think that the japanese english teacher visiting the states to do a report on how things are taught in america was secretly laughing at me after I introduced myself.. :drool:
I don't know where to start with vocab, so I think I'm going to wait until I can no longer take japanese classes before I start my in depth independent study. >.< I know colours, body parts, animals, basic objects, counting, time, erm.. bunka, and limited slang XD; along with other that I can't recall immediately ._.

ありがとうございます！　Ｂｕｔ，　ｉｎ　ｒｅａｌｉｔｙ，　Ｉ　ａｍ　ａｎ　ｉｄｉｏｔ　ｆｏｒｅｉｇｎ ｅｒ．．　ｗｉｔｈ　ｍｙ　ｋｎｏｗｌｅｄｇｅ　ｏｆ　ｏｎｌｙ　２００　ｋａｎｊｉ　ｘＤ


IkuAki；
Do you ever use usuagichan's genki resources? It's my favorite site, mostly because.. It has drag-and-drop letter games >0> Easy review, yatta!

IkuAki- Oh cool I'm part Japanese as well (=
ohh so you learn by videos then? Do you know your learning style? Do you work best with writing it down, hearing, hands-on, maybe repetition?
Flat things you just add the suffix "mai" .. so it's like ichimai, nimai, sanmai, yonmai, ect.
Oh! You're going to Japan? You need survival skills then! lol.. not like it's too hard if you're in a big city like Tokyo or Kyoto.. they have English all over to help tourists. But if you're going to a smaller town then you'll more likely need to know more. Here are some things you should know how to communicate about:

~where is the bathroom?
~distinguish man kanji from woman
~directions
~food
~how prices work and how to say them
~basic greetings
~health vocab might come in use

Rainbows- if you don't know all of those then you might want to practice up on those too but it sounds like you're doing pretty good so far : p umm *brainstorm* what else?

X3 Well, it's what we learned in class.. I haven't done much out -of -class learning, sadly.
Ohh.. I remember now that I've always had trouble with higher numbers. o3o I know man is ten thousand, but I cannot remember the kanji for thousand or remember what thousand is. Is it sa - something?

千　（せん/sen) is thousand... looks similar to katakana chi (チ).
hmm I kinda feel like feeding off of each other.. Imma list the colors i know and if you guys know any more than this please say them or else just pick up what you might not know : 3

赤い　（あかい/akai） -red
オレンジいろ/orenjiiro -orange [orange color]
きいろ/kiiro -yellow [sulfur color]
緑　（みどり/midori）-green
水いろ　（みずいろ/mizuiro） -sky blue [water color]
青い　（あおい/aoi） -blue
むらさき/murasaki -purple
はいろ/hairo -grey [ash color]
黒い　（くろい/kuroi）-black
白い　（しろい/shiroi）-white
ピンク/pinku -pink
金いろ　（きんいろ/kiniro） -gold [gold color]
銀いろ　（ぎんいろ/giniro） -silver [silver color]

Ah! I never knew silver. o3o -writes that down-

Chairo is brown, or tea colour. n_n
茶ろ

oh ya that's true huh : 3 hmm I want tea now XD ocha! ocha! .. = 3=;; or also calipso fruity cafe.. omg those are so bomb @_@ first got it from a vending machine in Kyoto lol. : 3

@Rainbows: No I haven't heard of that one? :O Where is it?

@Strange: No. For each lesson, they give us words and phrases to learn and then teach us sentence structure incorporating the words. There is a little review and at the end there are 10 new hiragana characters to learn and then words that you can learn based on the hiragana you have learned thus far. I try to write things down repeatedly to memorize them. Sometimes I can just stare at them for a really long time too. xD Oh the flat things seems easy enough. :D We'll be going to Tokyo, but oooh those are things I haven't thought about learning. （ばか）

No seriously lol. Communication ftw. Just because someone doesn't think about something right away doesn't mean that they are stupid. They may have simply been distracted with other things, for example. I was trying to think of the ones I know and I learned "chairo" in class but Rainbows remembered it before I did lol. Congrats on getting to go btw. (= It's an awesome place. I have to admit I haven't explored Tokyo a whole lot.. mostly just been in the train station and around by disneyland/disneysea but I know for sure I love Kyoto so Tokyo must be pretty up there too xD
Another thing that might help you remember things btw.. is if you have some kind of mental image to connect them with. So when you get further in Japanese, even if you can't remember the exact word, you can try to describe it. That works well in English too lol. xD Like in my class we used to look at pictures of the word and say them in Japanese.. and then after we got that down, we would tell it apart from other ones and then finally create it from memory on ourselves. Once we could do that we were ready to start using it in sentences. And sometimes it comes really easy.. like.. just adding "desu" can mean you're using it in a sentence lol....

ummm hey Imma watch American Idol in half an hour so Idk how much I will really say before then but I hope you get something from this...

EDIT: Ok so show is over now xP
For the reference, when asking for a bathroom you can use a casual word as in トイレイ (toirei), which comes from the English word toilet.. or you can also use a more polite word for it.. おてあらい (otearai).. and you know how to ask where it would be now right??

Haha. Yeah. When I'm studying I understand what I'm doing, and I can read everything and translate it, but dangit when I try to make a sentence of my own I'm like "...hmmm" hur hur hur.. :P
No I don't know how to ask where something is.. D:

Ok well here are the main question words (=
(kanji: 何)　なに/nani --- WHAT
だれ/dare -- WHO
なんで/nande,　どうして/doushite,　なぜ/naze --WHY
いつ/itsu --WHEN
どこ/doko -- WHERE
どう/dou --HOW

so you could ask where something is a few ways

1. (word) wa doko desu ka?
2. (word) wa doko ni imasu ka? --animate object
3. (word) wa doko ni arimasu ka? --inanimate object

so a simple way to ask where the bathroom is would be:
~otearai wa doko desu ka
~toirei wa doko desu ka

Ooh this is helpful! In my lesson thing I've only learned nani/nan and dare.
Arigatou!
I must memorize this!

I'm glad to be of service!! ^_^ only thing I'm concerned about is that I teach too much too fast.. ^^" but I guess just concentrate on however much you can at one time eh? For some people it will just be refreshers, but for others its really new information : o and I have plenty I don't know lol.. mostly because my grandma was scared to speak Japanese around me as a kid because she thought it'd confuse me lol.. but .. yah.. idk.. it's a fun language to really get into ^_^

Oh! My goodness! This is so helpful to me. I have been trying to learn Japanese forever. I think long as I have someone to practice with I will get better. Maybe....

yah we all need practice!! come join : DD

Wow, I need to go back and study this thread more closely. So many Japanese lessons! Yay!

Ok lol and if you have any questions or want to experiment feel free =D I can only teach people because I understand it well enough, and if you understand it well my job is done. Besides that I appreciate the practice myself and would love to learn if there is something else I don't get >ㅂ<

Edit: Idc really what topic.. I think many of them are fun. It makes it so that we know more Japanese or else can help others (= which is fun >w<

Sports topic: Watashi wa supootsu ga dekiru kedo, heta desu. Soredemo, 12sai no mae ni heta janakatta desu. Basuketto ga suki deshita. Chotto hayakatta desu.

Music topic: Watashi wa iroirona ongaku ga suki desu. Yoku ongaku wo kikimasu. Nihon no rakku to amerika no rakku ga daisuki desu. UVERworld to Shiido to gakuto ga suki desu.

Cute topic: Kawaiina koto ga daisuki desu! Hontou ni daisuki! Haro kitii to kudamono to kumachan ga daisuki desu. Takusan kawaiina koto ga aru'n da.

How did you learn japanese?

I think a lot of people picked it up from school. (= For me, I learned bits and pieces from my half Japanese dad and then studied on my own through middle school until I took a trip to Japan and then finally classes in school. XD and now I'm back to studying on my own. (= Imma take more classes in college but really if you wanna start with the basics they're not that hard ^_^ there's not long and short vowels like in English. The way that you see & hear it is the way that it is spelled. : D I have a start of lessons on my website if you wanna pick up some basics. I should really get past half of lesson 7 but the people who have used it have found it helpful. >w<

Do you watch anime or anything? Because sometimes even doing Japanese with English subtitles you can pick up stuff like baka, nani, hai, sou desu ne, ect. : O

Yeah, I took classes in college but I've learned more random words watching anime than I can recall from my formal classes.

hmm then maybe you wanna learn more grammar? : o Do you know much of that?

I used to know a lot more than I remember, so yes, I'd love to relearn some of the grammar.

Renshuu o shimasu. (That is practice or study or something right?)

Ohayou Gozaimasu! Watashi wa Garnet desu. Gomen, but I only know a little Japanese. But I'm learning with the help of a video game called "MyJapanese Coach". =^.^=

Saravi- yesyes practice ^_^ studying is benkyou o shimasu
Alrighty : D well.. if you remember these, the particles are: wa, ga, de, ni, e, no, wo, to and ya. Some people think they are complicated, but if you have a good enough explanation it makes sense perfectly fine. ^_^ Since you've probably learned at least some of these in school, for now I'll just say what they are briefly and get as detailed as you need after this. Something good to remember is that the particle is after the word that you are connecting it to. You can rearrange the order of a Japanese sentence, but the particles must -always- stay to the word it is supposed to.

For example, you can say
kuruma de uchi ni.... or..
uchi ni kuruma de
And it really doesn't make a difference. If you switch around too heavily from what is pretty much the standard form, it can start to get awkward and confusing, however, you will still very likely be grammatically correct, but it's still fine to do overall. If someone is to listen to any of your sentence, then they listen to it in pieces... by word+particle then another word+particle and such... Generally you still want to keep the verb at the end of the sentence. : o I mean, if you're saying like...

I went to the store, but i forgot to get bread.
then of course you will have a verb in the middle of the sentence, but just as a rule of thumb it is usually common and works very easily.

So yah.. the particles..
wa- topic marker, information that is minor
ga- new or stressed information
de- place of action, tool particle
ni- location marker, also can be to an event
e- location marker but not an event (if you're not sure you can use ni instead): "to"
no- possession particle
wo- suggesting action
to- "with", "and" between nouns for complete list
ya- "and" between nouns for INcomplete list

Don't worry if you don't get this right away.. I kinda just skimmed through it so far but we can still talk and make sure you remember (=

Garnet- Hai, ohayou gozaimasu, Garnetsan! ^_^ hajimemashite. and oh : D its fine.. go at whatever pace you need. hmm so is that on ds? I think I've heard of it.