learning japanese!!!!!

I'm not sure if it works as well at your age but when I was a young child I was taught reading and writing first before I understood anything hehe, but of course you'd learn a few words on the way

Personally i learned words from anime, and then when i see chinese characters that fit the meaning, i make a connection between the two. Also, quite a few kanji have similar pronunciation as their chinese counterparts. I recommend learning the gana first.

[MENTION=26148]perrypig123[/MENTION]

First, learn and memorise the charts by hard. Going to any elementary course may help, but I think its more than fine to learn them yourself through various sources online. Learning how to pronounce and write both hira and kata is extremely important. You may have picked up various words or phrases from watching animu, try to write those words out eventually without any help from the charts. Make sure you are till the point that you can recognise the character straight-off by looking only. To achieve that, its really just memorising. Memorise and write at the same time.

And I would recommend hiragana first then proceed to katagana. My friends' have different opinions on this order, as some claim kata is easier than hira, but its entirely up to you. I went through the hira -> kata option.

For kanjis, there's no straight-forward way to learn. Either you pick up a (jap)dictionary, or you start deciphering japanese sentences or articles to make sure you get the meanings. Other than that, its remembering the words and what meaning they (can) indicate. Kanjis often have more than one meaning, and they differ from chinese despite being same characters (I am chinese too).

Hope this helped.

I tried learning romaji then connected that with hiragana. After hiragana, you can try katakana because they are similar when written. Afterwards, the kanji will take place, but there are levels of kanji. Take some time to be familiar with them and memorize them if you can.

Maybe if you have time and are willing to practice like, every day for at least an hour, doing both hiragana & katakana would make everything go damn fast