I'll give a couple of these a shot, but I also really have to recommend the spaced repetition Anki provides for drills. There are a lot of community created dec

I'll give a couple of these a shot, but I also really have to recommend the spaced repetition Anki provides for drills. There are a lot of community created decks [0] for different aspects of Japanese. And for some reason, creating your own deck for topics or vocabulary really seems to help with memorization. I can say that after just over three weeks I'm sounding out words. I think hours practiced are a better measure than weeks, but I don't know how many hours I've spent. (Even then sleep seems vital to processing the material, so you can't probably can't just count straight hours you've spent cramming.) My study has involved using this deck [1]; writing out the hiragana and katakana charts several times; and using Tofugu [2][3] or YouTube for mnemonics, extra explanation, or stroke order. [0] https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search=japanese https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search=japanese [1] https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/827975112 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/827975112 [2] https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/ https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-hiragana/ [3] https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/ https://www.tofugu.com/japanese/learn-katakana/