Instead of これは, say この to mean “this computer”.

Agree 100% with Mark. Don’t worry about readings, you’ll pick up the common/useful ones quickly as you learn vocab; give RTK I a shot, but don’t bother with book II or III.

Oh, well if you’re already at an intermediate level with Chinese, you won’t really need to practise kanji afterwards then haha :D

I have to say, I wasn’t a fan of Genki either, but I guess some people like it. Even though it’s probably kinda similar, I much preferred Japanese for Busy People.

Good point from Yggbert: drag-and-drop games for kana are a fun way of practising :) Back when I was learning, I also used a site called smart.fm – in the earlier days of TextFugu, it was the recommended flash card system, but then it became subscription based and changed to iKnow, so Koichi moved everything over to using Anki. smart.fm was good because it gave you a mix of multi-choice and type-in-the-answer questions (among others) – you can still do that with Anki, but it’s more of a hassle; this service was pretty slick and looked really nice. It could be worth checking out iKnow for when it comes time to start learning more vocab, if you can spare the change.

@Kris: Best way to learn what’s acceptable and what isn’t is to listen to Japanese natives. Do as they do.
And be careful when you’re typing (“wa” vs “ha”).

I tried making a “Passion List” based around music, but I gave up after a few entries – if I can barely say “Hello, how are you?”, I doubt I’ll be having an in-depth conversation about guitars any time soon :P May as well just learn the words as I see them. Everyone has different views, but I don’t really see a Passion List as being necessary/useful.

From japanese.about.com – “Roughly speaking, “wa” is a topic marker, and “ga” is a subject marker. The topic is often the same as the subject, but not necessarily.”

I don’t see how Koichi’s definition of wa and ga are really *that* much different. You shouldn’t have to know many English grammatical terms to learn another language, as long as you have an informal description to help you understand.

Also, you’re obviously not happy with a few minor mistakes in an informal textbook, so I’d ask for a refund now because it’s not going to get any better.

The thing with desu is that, when you start off, you learn about in VERY basic terms (which could be classed as slightly “wrong” since it’s not the full story) because it’s easier that way. But as you get more into the language, you come to learn what kind of beast desu REALLY is. It’s the same with wa and ga. Or it’s like learning that acceleration due to gravity is 10m/s/s, and then told later it’s actually 9.8m/s/s, and then later that it’s 9.81m/s/s (is it 9.81? I can’t remember) – it’s easier to think of it as 10m/s/s in the first place, even though that’s inaccurate. Or like being told an electron has no mass (it does, it’s just negligible when you’re only doing basic physics/chemistry).

Also, I’ve never known Koichi to be professional :P