Woah dude hold yer horses.. Its supposed to be a casual incline not throwing people in at the deep end. Shift into plain hiragana and move on to how are you and whats this, that etc..

Yep, that's pretty much what I intended. But I did mean "from the rain", not "in the rain", although that may be my mistake. I didn't know if using から for "from" would be appropriate here, so I found one example sentence were に was being used in a "hiding from" context, and assumed it might work.

Now that you mention it all of the example sentences i can find use に aswell

Lucas, very impressive.

Ladies and Gentelmen...I am going to make fun of myself!
But I will try to explain it...
隠す (かくす) is a transitive verb and means "to hide". Thus as a transitive verb it requires the を for what it is hidden. I wouldn't see it as "hiding from something", but more as "hiding your self/your body to someone/something". If you think it this way 雨に would represent what you are hiding from.
Always in my opinion (that I repeat might be as well be wrong) if the rain is the place where you are hiding from something or someone, than it would become a place where the action takes place, thus requiring で.
So the way I see it is...
私は雨に自分を隠す　I hide myself from the rain.
私は雨で彼に自分を隠す　I hide myself from him in the rain.

But wait someone with more knowledge than me to confirm or correct me.

WOW im really impressed guys. I wish i was half as good as some of the resident experts around here. Im teaching myself Hiragana and Katakana and the process is going painfully slow I know enough rōmaji to get by decently.

Keep it up guys im actually learning quite bit watching.

If you spend a day on it you really can get it all down. If you drag it out I find it becomes harder. Even if you spend a day learning it intensely, and practising it more loosely most days after that I find that you can do it~

I can't speak with certainty to the validity of that, but it seems like a perfectly logical explanation to me. Thanks for the idea :)

Thanks for that i have noticed that too. My problem is time i work so much and have so many things going on its hard to sit down and dedicate enough time as i would like to learning.

But im trying out the website that Shadow suggested and i think i this might good. I can use it while im at work and in between projects just open it up and start testing myself. If i have to speak Japanese to another person i can get buy fairly well but writing it will take more dedication on my part.

じっつはそのサイトがつかいませんでした。。

How long exactly have you been studying kana for? I have a degree, a college course and 2 jobs to rush around after and I managed to get kana down in less than 2 weeks with only 20mins study a day.

My memory is god aweful.. so if I can do it, you can.