I imagine someone posted something similar to this, but I went through a few pages and didn’t see it, so i’m posting my methods here. :)

APPS

I used a couple of supplemental apps for practice (Dr. Moku’s Hiragana/Katakana free version – for the kana quizzes. Just cover the multiple choice answers so that you can answer the correct one without help. ;)) and Busuu for when I few minutes during the day to practice some vocab. (Busuu is a cool app for learning greetings, and vocab and you can read the sentence in Japanese and hear it spoken. Just don’t sign up for a free account online, or they’ll try to get you to correct all the English learners lessons. ;)) There are tons of apps available, so when i’m not busy, sometimes i’ll search “Hiragana” “learn Japanese” etc. and download some free ones, then go through them and see what I like, and delete the rest.

YouTube

There are some great (and some aweful) YouTube videos with vocab, numbers, colors, phrases, etc. Just YouTube search Japanese Phrases or whatever you’re looking for (I know Textfugu recommends JapanesePod101, and they have some good vids. http://www.youtube.com/user/japanesepod101/videos?view=0 ) You can also, if you have a smartphone, pause the vid, and take a screenshot of it, and then go back and review phrases or words through your phone pictures. :)

CUT & TAPE – Immersion  is key!

So far, for Hiragana & Katakana (and now for vocab) I personally think that if you see something constantly, you’ll remember it better (That’s how we learned English, but we’re not in Japan, most of us, so we don’t have Japanese in our face unless we put it there!), so, I printed out about 5 of Tofugu’s hiragana chart (for the combo section and Dakutan(sp?)), then went on Google Images and searched “Hiragana chart” picked out a few charts that I liked (like this one http://www.zenratai.com/nihongo/hiragana_chart.htm ) for both Hiragana and Katakana, printed one chart with the romaji sounds written on it and one without them (or wrote them in/whited them out), printed them out, taped the chart with the Romaji write-in on it, upside down to the back side of the one with no write-in, and copied it so that it came out two-sided. This wasn’t the fastest process in the world. It took a few tries with the photocopying, but once I got a chart for each set of kana, I made 5 copies of each and put them all over my house (and one in my purse), so I can look at the chart with the kana and romaji wherever i’m at, and after I feel I know them, flip it over, and practice without the romaji, and flip it back over to check myself.

When I go to make coffee, there’s a kana chart! When I sit down at the computer, there’s a kana chart! When I’m all ready for bed, there, taped to my nightstand… a kana chart! I think this method helped me learn them pretty fast, so i’m putting my Katakana charts out everywhere now because i’m not lightning fast at it yet. You could make separate charts for the combo kana and dakutan, and vocab, or whatever you need more practice in, and put those everywhere too.

IMMERSING YOURSELF IN JAPAN …or, your apartment, with a thousand colorful sticky-notes. :D

I saw someone in this catagory mention sticky-notes for vocab, and I just thought of another idea for vocab learning. If you live alone, or if your roomates/family don’t mind, you could write different items (all items???) in your house in Japanese (not romaji, guyzz!) on sticky notes, and stick each word it to that item (likeコーヒー  on the coffee pot, and バナナ on your bananas, テレビ on your TV, etc.) and you would remember it every time you looked at it!  Oh man… I’m gonna do this tomorrow. This is gonna be fun!! hahaha. :D

That’s all I could think of for now. I hope it helped some of you out! <3