How would I study Japanese if I had to do it all over again

Japanese is not my native language. I have spent almost 20 years surrounded by it, first as a language learner, and later as a language user. I started young, where not much materials and resources were available - Internet was much different in early 2000s, and we didn't have apps! Partially due to lack of knowledge and guidance, partially due to lack of materials, my progress was far from optimal. For over a decade, I've been guiding hunderds and hundreds of students on their Japanese learning journeys, whilst observing changes and innovations in teaching methodology and learning resources. Here are some things I would do differently if I had to study Japanese all over again, from scratch.

Kanji

I am not joking when I say that kanji is the most important difference between dabbling with Japanese and achieving fluency. It's not because I love kanji - I ended up writing my PhD dissertation on them - no, it's because you will not be able to expand your written language input beyond your current kanji level. And even when it comes to spoken language input, knowing kanji can help you understand vocabulary faster.

My biggest mistake in learning Japanese was ignoring kanji. I burried my head in the sand and kept hoping that it will sort itself out. But unlike some other language skills that you can pick up, for most people kanji requires structured and repetitive study. It doesn't have to be boring, and it doesn't have to be just writing a character thousand times over and over. (In fact, that doesn't really work for me.)
If I had to study kanji from scratch, I would familiarise myself with kanji structure, frequency and spaced repetition - they are very powerful tools which aid your memory and can save you years! I would use a book with kanji mnemonics such as Heisig's approach (even though the order in the book is not doing anyone a service - I'll write a blog about that later!). I would separate learning kanji shape and meaning, from learning the readings and vocabulary - for me, and many other students, it can be overwhelming and potentially better to separate these processes. I would start using spaced repetition apps such as Anki much earlier, and take kanji quizzes seriously.

Grammar

Young me thought that learning grammar equals learning the language. If you happen to have an interest for grammar, and acquire it quickly, it's easy to get a false idea of progressing much further that you are, in the communicative sense. I would still study grammar and enjoy it, but I would prioritise other skills and not skip over exercises just because I feel I already know the grammar. They can be an opporunity to learn more vocabulary!
I wouldn't change my learning path much; I would keep using structured sources to teach me grammar. I still find popular textbooks such as Genki, Tobira, Minna no Nihongo, and others really decent and useful. If I had to choose one, I would go with either Genki or Tobira beginners from scratch. Genki also has an amazing free-to-use website made by an enthusiastic language learner, where you can do interactive quizzes and exercises, and check your results on the spot. I couldn't recommend it more!

Vocabulary

I do not need to tell you how important it is to know as many words as possible to be able to communicate. An adult has an approximated vocabulary of around 20 thousand words (!), and it is said that you need to know at least several thousand to be a fluent speaker. This source suggests 3.500-5.000, because not all words are built different. Out od 20-35 thousand words that a native speaker naturally knows, some are used much more than others, and some will almost never come up in a conversation and mostly are just recognised. You will be ok with knowing a certain number of most common words to be able to communicate. Now that's the good news, but this number is still very large! After so many years, I'm still encountering new words almost every single day. That's mostly because I actively seek them out to avoid status quo and to keep expanding my knowledge.
Now if I could rewind my vocabulary study journey, I would make vocabulary my number one priority - in addition to kanji, which is also sort of vocabulary study. I would stop fearing some words and use spaced repetition method, in addition to getting more input all the time. Reading, watching, listening - I would start making lists of new vocabulary as soon as I got to the intermediate level, and keep curious!

Speaking

Since I started learning in my childhood, I wasn't really shy about speaking, and I was lucky not to experience the speaking anxiety in my early years. However, once I got to university and beyond, I became more and more self-conscious about my speaking skills. I guess that comes with becoming an adult! I would combat speaking anxiety by actively working on my mindset and stopping the fear of making mistakes. Your teachers will have an easier job if you embrace mistakes, and you will progress so much more!
I would also actively ask for corrections and paraphrases more, to expand my vocabulary and make sure that people are not ignoring my mistakes out of politeness. Even though mistakes are nothing to be embarassed about, there are some environments where accuracy is expected, and speaking is an easy way to get feedback.
You sometimes don't have anyone to talk to. In that case, I recommend saying things out loud or in your head to yourself. Repeating or shadowing recorded speech is really helpful, too. It's easiest to start with curated materials such as textbook dialogue MP3s, and gradually move on to more natural and free speech, such as YouTube videos, films, anime etc.

Accent

Japanese, unlike English, has pitch accent. That means that some syllables are pronounced with higher pitch than others. In addition to that, some vowels are long, and sometimes we make a little stop in the middle of a word, denoted by a double consonant. Japanese phonology and accentology is not vastly complicated, but it is fairly difficult to master.
I will be honest: I never concerned myself much with the accent. Even from the earliest days, I found people understood me well. However, when I started working in Japan, and I was teaching in Japanese to young (and sometimes too blunt) university students, some ruder kids would occasionally mock my intonation and pitch. Of course, these situations are extremely rare, and you will likely have no issues, but being able to reproduce a near-native pitch accent will lead to some positive outcomes. People tend to make more positive assumptions about your language level if you sound well, and most speakers are unable to naturally notice how complex or deep your grammar knowledge is. So, it's a good method to make great first impression.
That being said, your natural accent is a part of your identity, and as long as you make yourself understood, I don't think you need to strive to become a perfect carbon copy of a native speaker. Not all native speakers have the same accent (Osaka and Tokyo natives have a totally different pitch!) - just think of your native language and how differently people around you think and sound.
But, if you wanted to do it, what should you do? Nowadays, there is a lot of content about pitch accent on Youtube. You can easily learn the rules and apply it to any new words or patterns when you study, and pay attention to the pitch when you shadow people.

Listening

This is an amazing time to be a learner of Japanese! There are so many resources available, from YouTube, Netflix, Prime video and other streaming services, where you can watch original Japanese content, and even put Japanese subtitles on! You can easily access games with voice acting (the Switch is a great platform for gaming in Japanese). If I was starting from scratch, I would watch everything I'm interested in in original language. I would immerse myself with content in Japanese, even from beginner level. And the more you progress, you will be able to wean yourself of English subtitles at one point. I would listen to music in Japanese (and sing it out loud!) - that works so well for memorising vocabulary in context. Yes, it is true that people don't talk in real life the way anime characters speak, or like the song lyrics. But there is a lot of content where you can hear natural speech, such as streamers, commentary videos and reality shows. Plus, I don't think that watching content such as anime will "pollute" your speaking. Most people are able to differentiate easily between situations where a certain language style is appropriate, and I never met anyone who "speaks like an anime character" because they watch too much anime content. Rather, it might help expose you to more diverse topics, and help you learn words.

Reading

Reading 🤝 kanji. I mentioned earlier that (not) knowing kanji is the biggest barrier to input in the written language, so it is essential to make sure you recognise enough characters to read comfortably without checking every other word in the dictionary. It is not motivating or fun to read when you're losing track of the meaning all the time. If I was new to reading, I would practice tadoku -  speed reading method where you focus on understanding the gist of the text, and not being too pedantic about understanding every single word. It works best when you find a text appropriate to your current level, that challenges you, but it is still possible for you to understand most from context and only occasionally use dictionaries. On this Tadoku website you can find a lot of beginner level materials!
As you progress, you will be able to read more and more materials of different levels, and after a while you will be able to access materials aimed at native (fluent) speakers. If I could do one thing differently, I would never stop reading! Getting as much input as possible is an invaluable help in achieving fluency. Input is not always through reading, but reading is easy to implement in your life and do every day, even if it's in small doses. Manga is a natural next step - with images it's much easier to understand words from context, and there are enough genres to satisfy every taste and interest!

Writing

Developing your writing skills can be tricky when studying alone. Unlike simple textbook exercise, it's difficult to get feedback on free-form writing, even if it's in short form. My method to study writing was simply to write, and get teacher's feedback. However, if you're studying Japanese now, you can use additional tools to help you. Even though you might learn more with a human approach (i.e. feedback form a qualified teacher, or just a fluent speaker whom you know), if you don't oppose using AI in language learning, you could benefit from using generative AI to help you with your writing. If you write a good prompt, an app like Chat GPT can help you with beginner level writing. You could ask it to correct your work only using beginner level grammar and vocabulary, and ask it to explain why you made a certain error. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this blog, I found the AI explanations still lacking, but the corrections can be quite good. 

Final thoughts

So much to do, and so little time! Or is it? Unless you have a very specific goal in mind, you can relax and approach your Japanese learning journey for what it is - a journey, which takes a long time, and the more you enjoy it, the more likely you are to stay on the course. You are allowed to have fun with your learning, and make friends with similar interests on the way. Everything is more fun if you get to share it with someone who supports you, pushes you, and challenges you.

What would you change in your language learning journey if you started all over again?