[steven]

I'm pretty vocal about it and I think a lot of peopel disagree with me... but I'd say your best bet is to immerse yourself. It's not something that can be done in a matter of months, let alone even a year or two. I don't know where you pulled that 5% stuff from, but I'm not sure how vaild it is. I think language acquisition is something that is hard to measure on terms like that. Some people study as much as they can and never seem to get it, and then one day it clicks. That's what you're looking for -- the catylist that will make it happen for you.

Everyone is probably different, but what I found worked for me was watching as much Japanese TV as I could, as well as movies (sometimes the same movies over and over). I didn't find music to be too helpful. I had a learned some of the basics from textbooks by the time I started doing this, but to be frank, I'm not sure the textbooks helped too much (as a matter of fact, they are far from realistic). The order of things that you learn seems arbitrary to me. Sometimes I'd lay around in my back yard (on sunny days) just reading from a basic Japanese grammar book trying to recognize stuff I'd heard, or learn some new stuff from it. If you have japanese friends you can talk to, figure out which grammar forms are actually used in everyday conversation and mark those pages (or mark the bad ones). Also, talk to them as much as you can, as that will be more of a real life situation than watching tv or movies will.

Everyone talks about reading like you absolutely have to do it... I'm not so certain about that. I still can't read that well and I speak decent Japanese. Most of the reading you'll need to do will be train stop names/street signs... and it's not like you're gonna be studying that kinda stuff when you study from textbooks.

I got kinda confused by all that korean talk , too. I'd say set your priorities and decide which one you want to do. If Japanese is more important now, go ahead and work on that first. The languages are supposedly similar, so learning one will probably help in learning the other (but will probably also introduce false friends and the like).

I also feel as though having somewhat of a musical background helps with language acquisition. If you have the time, work on ear training as I think this will help you hear the nuances in intonation and things like that.

Another thing that I think is important: don't overanalyze everything. Just turn off your brain (the thinking part) and listen. The sounds will still enter your ears, and your brain will still do something... but don't try to hear every word. Listen to the rhythm and the flow of the language, as though you were listening to a really good album or something like that. Zoning out and doing that is something that no school will ever teach you. They wanna sell you books and tests and all that BS. Just relax and let it happen naturally.