Ok so they are all pretty much normal uses of the number seven. I thought you might have some more exotic uses of the number seven.

“I’d like to buy seven bananas, please”

I’d say either shichi or nana is fine here, using the hon counter.

“Next Thursday is seven days away.”

Nanoka?

“This evening, I’ll be watching Seven Wives for Seven Brothers… or The Seven Samurai.”

I have no idea what seven wives for seven brothers would be in Japanese, is that like seven brides for seven brothers?

Seven samurai appears to use shichi

“My phone number is 555-7777.”

I think either is fine here.

“The politician swindled seven million yen.”

Either is fine here too nanahyakumanen or shichihyakumanen

“What do you get when you multiply seven by nine?”

I think either is fine here as well.

Places where I would matter I would say are months, vs, amount of months.

shichigatsu vs nanakagetsu.

So my rule was use nana, except where you should use shichi.

Looking at the above, I don’t really see where my rule falls down.

That said it’s a pretty stupid rule, it really doesn’t say anything useful. But worrying about stuff like that when you’re a beginner is pretty pointless anyway, so for a beginner rule its perfectly adequate.

For people who are beyond beginner I’d say, just learn Japanese.

I can’t really see what point you were making though.

Did you have a point?

Use the kanji,

Do reading and writing that uses the kanji.

Even using a method such as spaced repetition will not make kanji stay in your brain, you need to use them, regularly to make them stick.

Make up sentences that use the kanji and the grammar you have learnt.

Write them read them etc.

Forget about on and kun readings.

on and kun are useful from a linguistic point of view, if you want to take a language and categorise it and work out a grammar, etc. etc.

If you are learning, it doesn’t really matter if you know what a kun or an on reading is. You just need to know the reading.

As a beginner there are enough challenges for you, without trying to remember linguistic labels.

The more you learn Japanese the easier it gets. Once you have learnt your first 120 kanji, and you know the basic grammar, you’ll understand better how the language works, and then maybe you will want to revisit on an kun readings, or not.

As far as the whole

nana / shichi thing.

I’d advise you to use nana, at all times except when you specifically should use shichi.

Its been explained as shi means death in Japanese, and so Japanese people prefer not to use shichi, except when they do.

Take that meaning with as many grains of salt as you like.

It would be nice if any language followed a single set of rules for it all, no natural languages do.

Don’t consider anything you get taught in Japanese as a rule, they are just a general guideline. Some more useful than others.

And don’t get too hung up on any one thing. If you don’t understand, make a note, carry on, when you know more Japanese revisit it. And you’ll likely understand.

Whether the ra ri ru re ro sound like an l or r depends on what comes before / after it, and who is saying them.

One of my teachers is from tokyo, and one is from osaka and they have different ways of pronunciating them.

Really, its not a big deal, the more you speak and listen, the better you’ll get at saying them. If you are a beginner, accept the fact you are a beginner, you can’t be perfect right away.

Just keep learning, and practicing.

I second AEDict

I have also heard people rave about Jishop, http://www.jishop.com/android/

When using wa to contrast two things you need to mention both things.

Wa servers to de-emphasise what it follows.

Ga on the other hand Emphasises what it follows.

The extra emphasis of ga adds the implication.

Its like the example in koichi’s text fugu.

I hate YOUR car.

Ga is used to imply that it is specifically your car i hate not all cars. With the implication that there is something wrong with your car, maybe its dangerous or smelly or something.

O.k., I know が and は are super crazy in that it is very difficult to explain them fully, but could someone clarify what should be used in a sentence I wrote on Lang-8?
My sentence: “春の雨が好きじゃありません。”

First corrector: “春の雨が好きではありません。”

I would say this is a valid correction. When writing ではありません is used, じゃありません is typically used only in speech.

However ではありません is polite form, which when used with a na-adjective like 好き in a diary / journal entry you don’t need to be polite, it is more natural to use the negative plain form of the copula ではない　 (with the spoken version じゃない) If you have no idea what i’m on about, you can probably ignore all that :)

Second corrector: “春の雨はが好きじゃありません。”

The second corrector has は and the first corrector has が
Is it just a matter of preference? (Does not が identify ‘Spring’ (はる/春)?)

Its not so much a matter of preference but a matter of meaning.

Using が is saying specifically rain in spring is what you don’t like and it implies perhaps there are rains in other seasons you do like.  Using は puts the emphasis on the disliking there isn’t really any strong implications as you would get withが. In Such a simple sentence there is really no issue with は or が.

As far as a correction its a matter of what you are trying to say, either は or が are valid in this sentence, context would probably be important as well, have you previously talked about the spring rain / weather? If so you would probably topicalize using は as its ‘old information’ kind of thing.