in reference to page one,

- sumimasen = excuse me; sorry

how does this differ from

gomen or gomenasai?

ahh. ok now what if it was the person is your senpai but also a close friend. which one holds priority?

and also, if can......... how do you know which Japanese words don't exist in native Japanese and have to write it with katakana?

words like car have katakana version and kanji version, which one is appropriate to use?

writing in katakana would be easier to read i guess. gonna go bit by bit on my H and K memorization. I can read Kanji, as in +/- know what it refers to but don't know what it actually is read as in Japanese.

often watching anime, you know those random words to describe a scene appearing on boxes. i probably could understand half of it, much thanks to Kanji text. now have to learn up the rest, not all anime subs translate those text.

hehe. i just want to learn to read, and able to listen to anime without resorting to subs. gonna take a while.

i see gomen and gomenasai. i see anime people say gomena but i can't find any reference on the internet.

looking at the text so far, kanji i see already can agak agak meaning cos i read Chinese text but i donno how to read it in japanese and I see how they use it quite differently. probably the biggest difference i spotted is 青 that means "green" in Chinese but in Japanese, that Kanji text means "blue".

hehe. now i can read probably 1/4 of the hiragana........ haven't gone into katakana, let alone kanji.

when i play anime..........aiyah, still cannot get the sentences, other then the common words. (ok la, understandable cos i'm probably in my 3rd day of more serious japanese language study.)

what's the diff between GAMBATTE and GAMBARRE? or did you just typed wrongly?

This one ah?

http://www.tofugu.com/giveaways/genki-japanese-textbook/

If you're N3 already, do you still need that one?

I have no problem memorizing Kanji because I'm Chinese ed, just that I have to learn up the "sound" for it. Kanji is like looking at traditional Chinese text to me, however some words carry different meaning, for example 青 in Chinese refers to green but in Japanese refers to blue.

Now the darndest thing for me is that I know Hiragana but I don't know what they mean. Basically I can read but heck, what on earth does the sentence mean? I could figure things out of there are Kanji around but heck I understand the Kanji but don't know how to read them.

Katakana is ze best!!!

Writing in kanji saves a whole lot of space!

Kanji also makes things more specific, because sometimes there are 2 terms that have the pronunciation. Hiragana is the same but the tone is different and hiragana doesn't carry tone in writing.

Going Kanji would be straight forward, spare the reader from guessing.

Eh Katakana is the easiest, just remember how the symbols are pronounced. They're only used for you to identify borrowed words, that's all.

You can learn katakana along with hiragana.

kanji is part of learning vocabulary anyway, for example cat is when you read ねこ while in kanji form it is 猫, and it's also ok to use ネコ (katakana form) as well.

As for learning my problem now is I know hiragana but when combined - wth do they mean? It means ........ .I'm lacking in vocabulary so I pick them up as I learn.

Lastly sentence structure - learn along the way too, I try to read / listen as often as I can and attempt to understand / pickup.

Some books or even videos are very good at explaining sentence structures.