Learning Japanese: Week 2

So 'bout two or three weeks ago, I finally hit my boiling point.

I see a lot of Japanese things for obvious reasons. Anime, games, ......... no, that's really about it. But what I often come across is useful information FOR these things (since... well.. they come from Japan). What aggravated me should be obvious...... I'm American; I can't read Japanese.

I don't really care to speak it, I just literally want to be able to read it, so I figured ".... it can't be -that- bad, there are only so many combinations you can come up with". Started thumbing around and saw how the symbol systems (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji) work. The first 2 sources I looked at said "You can go a great deal by knowing hiragana", so I got this great idea to just learn hiragana and seeing how far it got me.

.......... no no, it actually was an ok idea. After 3 days of grinding flash cards, I felt fairly comfortable browsing around and reading hiragana. I just didn't think everything through.

The first part that I didn't consider was that the obvious "well you don't know words anyway", 'cause it's not like everything has straight translations. I mean, I -considered- it for reading actual Japanese text, but for reading game character names and stuff? Actually didn't think it was that important. The second point was just over-eagerness, and that point is summed up with "lol you thought you weren't gunna have to bother with kanji, you dumb."

Skipping all the gruesome details, I grinded katakana as well and I'm ok at it. Started learning vocabulary because "why not? Even if I suck at actual grammar (which again, I'm not specifically aiming for), I could look into even more than the short term goal I originally had. It's been... interesting. Feels good to stumble my way through words and read stuff in kanas even if I know what it's SUPPOSED to say.

What I gotta figure out is how where to start on kanji. If I can do that, I'll have a system for learning everything I'm concerned with, and it'll just be a matter of time and effort.

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We'll see how that goes, though.