> Otherwise learn vocabulary in context by reading. I really enjoyed -- and benefited from -- "The Japanese Reader Collection". There's about 5 thin volumes av

> Otherwise learn vocabulary in context by reading. I really enjoyed -- and benefited from -- "The Japanese Reader Collection". There's about 5 thin volumes available from Amazon. They're basically Japanese children's stories, written in Kanji with Furigana and lots of annotations. Every word and sentence is explained and translated to English. I started off by simply reading the Furigana at normal reading speed, without caring about reading comprehension. This greatly helped with my kana reading. It especially helped me learn to cope with the lack of spaces in Japanese. Then I started to focus on the meaning. And now that I've memorized most the JLPT Level 5 Kanji, I'm starting to focus on recognizing them in the context of these stories.