ANYWAYS! I thought I liked it at first, being someone who went into the program with some knowledge of Japanese thanks to school. After a bit though it proved t be not as helpful as I thought. As stated there is no grammar lessons, nor is there any explanations as to word usage, especially with family words. (ex. [o]nii vs aniki/[o]kaa vs haha) You’re given words or phrases and paired pictures, but often times you have to really examine the pictures to understand what exactly the word/phrase is linked to. It’s not always obvious. And depending on how much time you spend on the program and away from it, it’ll start getting confusing. (i.e. picture depicts a house and yard “Maybe the word is house? Or maybe it’s yard? Or does it just mean outside?”)

Granted I did find that I can now look at a few kanji and know one of it’s meanings (since many have a few meanings depending on use). For example I can normally recognize car, police, and newspaper because of the program as well as a few others. And granted I did learn new words by using the program too, but that’s all I really find the program good for. It’s better as a practice software if you don’t know anyone you can practice with than a learning one. But even then the constant repetition of the same 15 words for like 3 (ish) lessons is extremely annoying. And the fact that each lesson is around 10 to 30 minutes long doesn’t make it any better.

Excuse my rambling. My reason for commenting wasn’t to talk about RS. I actually wanted to mention a site you may want to add to the list. Meetup.com is a pretty interesting site you may want to look into and add. It’s a pretty self explanatory site. I found a group in my city thanks to this that teaches Japanese. I prefer it to Craigslist as it’s all around “safer” and you don’t have to pay to attend any meetings. Though my group asked for a 2 dollar donation at the end of each meeting, the meetings are only twice a month so even I could (usually) afford it. Different groups will obviously have different rules, but it’s a fun way to get out, meet new people, and learn a new language.