TLDR; listen, speak, write , and read as much as possible with the curiosity and faith of a child
disclaimer I study a lot of languages, can speak Russian, and have been trying to get deeper into Japanese without losing my other skills for the past year.
For Russian I would recommend familiarizing yourself with the Cyrillic alphabet to become faster at word recognition when glancing at material. Since Russian is written fairly standard for general use (as long as it isn’t cursive) which makes an app such as duolingo perfect for beginning in the language.
Japanese on the other hand is not as standardized in writing form. You have three parts to the alphabet, if you will, hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Kanji are Chinese characters that are blended with hiragana to form sentences. Katakana is used for the plethora of foreign loan words, onomatopoeia, or words being emphasized. I have heard people start on duolingo, but I’m not sure how well it works beyond the very basic. I’ve heard the key for Japanese is to diversify and amplify input.
To break down some general rules when starting a new language:
- familiarize yourself with as many aspects of the language as possible
- Consume as much media as your brain and schedule can permit for the language of your focus
- Copying down sentences and phrases and reading them under your breath while doing so is invaluable. (You’ll notice children doing this when learning to read and write)
- Use an app to measure progress visually and to keep you diligent whether it’s duolingo, AnkiApp, memrise, etc
- Use YouTube videos, radio, films to measure your listening comprehension
-* In private* Do your best to mimic, mock, even make fun of the accent and speech patterns you’re picking up as though you’re a cartoon. You can even switch between languages but keeping the accent. This will help entrain your mind to create more authentic sounding replication of the language at hand.
- Japanese workbooks are very helpful to get reading and writing down but the same can be done by making a friend and texting or emailing back and forth, or reading/writing comments on Japanese forums, chat rooms and the like.
- Overall don’t sweat the small things like vocabulary as long as you are studying new words and noticeably understanding new phrases then you’re on the right track and you’ll realize if you’ve heard or seen something more than once it’s in your brain forever.