How To Get Started?

Using Japanese Premium: Level 1

How does a person get started learning the language? The lessons 1.0 Greetings uses the written form, but of course I can not read it as I do not know the alphabet and therefore I can not follow along as well as I would like. I learn the best when I can read it while listening and speaking the language.

For example, when I look at my Korean language pack it has the alphabet, Hangul, presented quite nicely. I'm a little biased because I learned Korean as an undergrad so I learned Hangul in a much different setting. However, Rocket Languages Korean has the full alphabet listed on one page along with the Play buttons to listen to the sounds. That's really useful.

Studying the Japanese alphabet does not appear to be so straight forward, so how can I get started in Rocket Japanese? I am definitely open to suggestions.

Thank you for your time.

Greetings Stephen!  Or as we would say in Japanese, Youkoso!

The thing with learning the language is that you have to try and find what works best for you.  Sometimes it might work just listening and repeating, and sometimes learning the alphabet might help.

As far as the Japanese alphabet goes, there are three different parts, Kanji, Katakana, and Hiragana.  Hiragana is used for words that are of Japanese origin, Katakana is for words that are not of Japanese origin.  Kanji meanwhile, simply uses words (Japanese and non Japanese origin) and makes symbols for them.  There is a method to the madness that is the Japanese alphabet, but once you get a basic pattern for it down, then you'll be ok.  Here are my suggestions with the alphabet.

1) Focus on learning the katakana and hiragana first.  Don't worry about kanji just yet.  Kanji can be frustrating even for Japanese natives.  The hiragana/katakana alphabet in Japanese uses a system based on the five vowels of a, i,u,e,o, and then adds the letter of k, s, t,n,h,m,y,r,or w in front of it to create the letters and words.  

a  i  u  e  o
ka ki ku ke ko
sa shi su se so
ta chi tsu te to
na ni nu ne no
ha hi fu he ho
ma mi mu me mo
ya yu yo
ra ri ru re ro
wa wo n

So if I wanted to say yes in Japanese (which is hai), then I would pick the letters ha and the vowel of i, then combine them to get hai.

Something that I will do (if it hasn't been done already), is create a set of kanji cards to help learn that other part of the language.  The main thing is to try and learn in the style that works best for you.  So what I am suggesting is to figure out what your learning style is, and then gear your studying towards that approach.  You will get much better results that way.

Hope this helps, and if it doesn't, feel free to go more into clarification and I'll do my best to try and rectify the situation.

I agree with Trutenor's suggestion of learning hiragana and katakana first. Genki uses a similar approach where the romaji only appears in the first few (three?) chapters, then changes over to kana (kanji with little hiragana below). I don't have the Korean module, but it sounds a bit like the RJ writing lessons on 1.10-1.14 (hiragana) and 2.11-2.15 (katakana), so you  may want to hop onto those modules ahead of the "sequence". {Since I went off on my own for over a year with Genki and tutoring and only came back recently to supplement my learning with the Japanese modules, I found the logic of having the writing modules only appear after all the dialogue and culture lessons unusual.}

You may also want to try out wanikani, which is a Kanji learning system. The first few levels are free. It teaches Kanji from the radicals and builds up. I've been using this in conjunction with the Kanji Learner's Course book and it's been working pretty well.

I learned all my hiragana and katakana before I started using RocketJapanese, it's helped a lot with being able to complete the writing exercises.

A good website/phone app I used was memrise.com, they have a course that teaches you some basic vocabulary and all the hiragana/katakana. There is also community created courses that focus on just hiragana or katakana. The only downside is that it doesn't explain much, it's just a flashcard kind of learning system, but it's free so I'll take what I can get... If you decide to try out memrise I suggest the phone app, it's a lot easier to use.

I also suggest JapaneseClass.jp. I don't use this one as much but it has lots of content. It will start with the basics, teaching you hiragana and katakana, then it can even teach kanji and vocabulary! There are also some good features like a forum, chat with other learners, and news articles that you can practice reading with. If you want to practice writing (stroke order...), I suggest JapaneseClass because it shows small diagrams with the stroke order. 

You can also just take it slow through the writing courses offered in RocketJapanese but it might be easier to follow along with the lessons if you already know some of the writing...
I hope these resources were helpful!! がんばって！！
 

Other places for learning the kanas and kanji are:
www.sporcle.com
www.drmoku.com
www.punipuni.com  (You can print out practice sheets for hiragana and katakana.)

Sometimes for kids, but fun anyway.