This is my first contribution to the community as I intend to learn Japanese. In 2017 I visited Japan and had a wonderful time learning and traveling all over the country. I went to cities up in Hokkaido all the way until down south in Okinawa.
It was a wonderful experience but also was a test to my many years of hearing Japanese with anime as well as friends and roommates speaking it, as I have had many in the past.
However I was surprised I was only able to spew a few random cookie cut phrases and wasn't able to elaborate complex ideas. Which was frustrated but also a lesson to take my learning more seriously. I plan to return to Japan in the future and hopefully have a better understanding of the language.
Unfortunately I don't think I'm skillful to make this post in Japanese so instead I'll list some of the things I have learned on Duolingo and other language apps.
The biggest first step is to dominate the Japanese basic hiragana and katakana characters. The difference between those are that katakana is used to write foreign words to Japanese like 'Mexico' for example (メキシコ) or Super (ス-パ-).
The next step is to learn basic expressions such as greeting and colors, so good morning (こにさわ), or black shirt (黒いシャツ).
Then comes the regular identification of things like clothes, shirt, pants, sweaters, underwear, etc
Then people, mom, dad, girl, boy, man, lady, sister and brother. Extended family like uncle's and aunts, grandad and grandma.
After almost 2 years in Duolingo I should be able to understand a basic conversation in Japanese. However I have to recognize i still struggle to watch a Japanese anime with no subtitles.
I have also used other apps like Tandem although without much success to actively talk with other people. Mostly just chat conversations. Also a Japanese Kanji app that teaches you the more complex kanjis, how to write them and use them.
Hopefully I'll get there soon enough.