I learned Japanese to a level where I can read novels without a dictionary, more or less. I just looked the words up one by one - I think the amount of time to

I learned Japanese to a level where I can read novels without a dictionary, more or less. I just looked the words up one by one - I think the amount of time to look up a word actually made me learn them better. If I only saw a word once, I would be less likely to look it up. If a word I didn’t know always came up, I’d look it up and write it down. You also get lots of examples of how to use a word if you look it up - a definition alone is not always the best way to learn. If you are reading online, you can use the chrome plugin rikaikun to get a mouse over lookup. But I still prefer a hard copy and an electronic dictionary.