Using Google Translate to help you to learn Japanese

Yes. Ok. You can put an English phrase into Google Translate and get some sketchy Japanese back in return.

But, in terms of learning, it also works well the other way round.

I wanted to test what I'd been learning so I typed the romaji versions of some basic phrases into GT to make sure I got the correct response. GT then suggests the kana/kanji version of what  you've typed. I then started to experiment with the various building blocks of sentences, moving from 'my name is...' to 'my friend's name is...'  for example, without having learned that particular phrase

GT has three ways of inputting Japanese text. You can type it in romaji, you can use the keyboard to generate hiragana, and you can use the mouse to draw kana and kanji.

When you type to generate hiragana it's important to remember that you need to double tap the N key to make ん, to make sure you use a double consonant when you want a small tsu e.g. matte まって (wait), and type compound hiragana as they sound (kyu (きゅ) rather than Ki u (きう) or Ki Yu (きゆ).

The ability to draw kanji and have GT interpret them is great. Recently, I was trying to work out what 非常識 meant and managed (admittedly after a bit of trial and error) to input all the kanji and get to the meaning: Insane! The drawing doesn't have to be dead on and GT will put up multiple suggestions.

As you can see, my version of 識 (しき) is rubbish, but it was enough to generate the correct Kanji.

GT is great (and let's all appreciate that it's free). It's far from perfect and doesn't replace actual conversation and other ways of getting insight into the Japanese language. However, it can get you out of a jam and provide you with some insight once you've got some basic grammar and vocab under your belt.

Studying without books

I'd been studying without using any form of textbook for ages and, now I've been cured of this affliction, I can tell you, it's much easier with some textual support.

When I'm bored of an evening, I do tasks on Mechanical Turk. MT is a site where you can do very simple online tasks and get paid a tiny amount of money for them. As I'm in the UK I can't get that money paid directly into my account and instead it gets credited to my Amazon balance.

Brilliant for the occasional textbook purchase.

I plumped for Japanese From Zero!

I'm really getting along with it. It's really well structured and not overly patronising. I'd already covered hiragana by the time I started with this book but if you've not, it's a great introduction. The book gradually moves from romaji to hiragana substituting more and more characters in each chapter. 

The book has a lot of writing tasks (which I don't do many of so my writing is really poor) including frameworks to help you to learn stroke order etc. Even though you don't need to know any Kanji to get through this, the book is cunningly setting you up to be able to read and write the symbols easily. 

When phrases are introduced they are written in both hiragana and Kanji/kana so you start to absorb the way in which standard Japanese is written. 

There are a whole series of these books so, if you get on with them like me, there's a path ahead of you.

Hoorah!