Welcome! What are your other languages? Considering you’re up to four writing systems, I’m guessing… Arabic and Russian?

Good luck with JET. Or as they say in Japanese, がんばって

Oooo, where’d you go?

Welcome! I’ve been to Dubai. Only did the touristy things, though. =)

Couple of tiny corrections, though: こんにちは is usually written in kana, and that should be 私は. =)

Welcome! It’s great you were able to go last year – it’s been five years since my trip, and I want to go again so very much…

One trick with the English menus is that even though restaurants had them, the staff couldn’t always read them. =P

In the end, any study is good study. Try reading things. I was playing 二ノ国 on my DS immediately before my N3 test as a way of unwinding a bit, and encountered the word 生える, which included a reading for 生 that I’d never seen before (it’s は). Guess what was question number 1 in the test itself.

It’s tricky to get grammar lists for the test, I grant, but there’s piles of apps out there with kanji and vocab flash cards. One app I like is StickyStudy – the N5-only version is free. Each vocab word has example sentences, which you can use for further practice. I’d also advise getting the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar – it teaches you all the grammar, and the example sentences make for good bonus practice. I admit, I’ve read it cover to cover. Literally. =)

Tofugu reviews it here: http://www.tofugu.com/reviews/a-dictionary-of-japanese-grammar/

In the end, though, your sig puts it best. Give it a go – even if you fail, it’s a learning experience for next time. =)

This isn’t an adverbs question – it’s a particles question. Particles in Japanese are post-positions – they always, always modify they word that comes before them. New learners to Japanese tend to think “hey, を always comes before a verb”, but it doesn’t. It always comes after the direct object (i.e. the thing that has the verb done to it) – it’s the direct object marker. In fact, the direct object (and the を attached to it) can be anywhere in the sentence (with the caveat that if it’s too far from the verb, people start to lose track of what’s going on). In English, the function words play in a sentence is defined by word order, but in Japanese, it’s defined by the particles, which means word order doesn’t matter, save that the verb always goes on the end. That said, if you jumble things too much, sentences start getting confusing.

With all that in mind, きます is an intransitive verb – it doesn’t take a direct object. (The same is true for “come” in English, you’ll notice.)

The positioning of adverbs is a little bit more flexible than other words, but the particles don’t change (otherwise you’d change the meaning of the sentence).

Welcome!