Studying Japanese Language/Literature/History

I personally would second (or third? or fourth?) the suggestion to go with a good JSL (Japanese as a Second Language) text rather than a text meant for Japanese kids. But avoid romaji like the plague. It is useful for learning hiragana and katakana, but once you have memorized them (or basically learned them) romaji has zero usefulness, and your reading will become smoother much faster if you read in Japanese. みんなの日本語 is basically "the" Japanese textbook these days. It came out after I left high school, and wasn't used in my uni yet, so I've never used it or looked at it, but I've certainly heard of it, so it would be a pretty safe option. The advantage of textbooks over the internet is that they put a lot of thought and research into textbooks, so I think personally that they tend to be a little more systematic in their approach and they have put a lot of thought into what vocabulary to introduce when, etc. But if you are planning to self-study you should take a good look inside any textbook or reference book you choose because some are really geared to being used in a classroom setting, and may include very minimal explanation (with that gap expected to be filled by a teacher... again I haven't actually looked at Minna no Nihongo, so I can't speak for it). Using a textbook with internet supplements for things that need more explanation is also good.

The problem with texts geared towards Japanese kids is that they already know the grammar pretty much perfectly, and they have the basic vocabulary which they just need to figure out how to read. There will be absolutely no useful explanation, so it will take a while for you to even get to that level. (Which is not to be discouraging, as an adult learner you will find that you learn a lot of "big words" that an elementary student doesn't know, but still don't know a lot that they do. And that's okay because you are usually having adult conversations. You just learn in a completely different way.)

My one suggestion is music, and specifically music programs (Music Station, HeyX3, CDTV, anything with people singing). The great thing about music shows in Japan is that they always have the lyrics on the screen. This is excellent reading practice (and helps you at karaoke). Music is good because you can learn the words with the music (even if you have no idea what they mean) and follow along on the screen. Songs also tend to have a relatively finite vocabulary, so you see the same words over and over again. If there is a song you really like, go through and look up what all of the words mean. Or when you start to recognize words that occur frequently make sure you look them up. Constant exposure, through multiple inputs (sight and sound) with a little added effort on the side does wonders.

And finally, if you haven't already, look into local volunteer groups that give Japanese lessons. I don't know about Kyushu, but in my area there are several groups that offer one on one lessons for about 200-300 yen a class. The quality of the teachers can vary as most are not professionals, but if you get lucky it can be really helpful to have someone who can explain things to you. Making Japanese friends is great, but unless you have some sort of language exchange or something, you probably won't want to spend your time together talking about Japanese grammar...

There may be something good on this website... http://u-biq.org/nihongo_fukuoka.html

how's everyone's studying going? I've been slacking off again T____T I did a little today. tofugu posted an adverb cheatsheet on facebook so I made some notes and then went through their counters cheatsheet that I'd bookmarked a while back and didn't get around to reading til now haha. oy counters are annoying =_=;

it's been over a month since i last visited mdl. i've kinda settled in nicely and i'm getting used to teaching english. i never did get the elementary school text books. but teaching english has actually helped with my learning japanese. i teach jr. high which has 3 grades. the 1st graders have been learning bits of english since elementary school but they aren't taught to write romaji until 1st grade jr. high=7th grade. they also translate passages in the text bks from english to japanese. what i've been doing is the same work as my 1st graders but in reverse. i'm learning the japanese. so i've been translating alot of basic english to basic japanese. and i have to be one lesson ahead of my classes, so that i can do the translations right along with them in class and make corrections when needed. my japanese teachers are always telling the kids that i've done the work in the text already and i should not get more than them. and the kids get a kick of seeing my hiragana and katakana. my 2nd and 3rd graders have been testing my vocab outside of class. so it's kinda like cross vocab checking eg. students: "onaji?" me: "same" students will then check the dictionary to make sure i'm right. then i get to ask them an english word and check the dictionary for the meaning. it's really helped me and i've learned verb conjugation finally. still having issues with it but the grammar is starting to sink in so i'm stumbling slowly into sentence construction.

i'll reply in the thread i started about living in japan.

I'm currently learning Japanese language and alphabet (KANJI) :) When I go into college, I will take foreign service and Japanese will be a easier to learn :)

I'm studying Japanese and Chinese. I've only been studying Chinese for four months but this is my third year studying Japanese. In fact, the 2nd of December I did the language proficency test NOKEN 5 (the easiest) and I don't know yet if I have passed, but I hope next year I'll be able to take the NOKEN 4.
It is true that it is a very different language (at least in my case, I speak Spanish) but I think that if you really like it and want to learn it you won't have any problem. I really enjoy studying it and sicnce I started three years ago I've made a lot of friends and had so much fun. Grammar is quite simple, in my opinion, the "worst" about Japanese are kanji. There are a lot (I study them singing songs with the lyrics in japanese, like karaoke haha) God bless hiragana and katakana!

I think no one has mentioned this dictionary, I find quite useful and easy to work with it (you can also look for words by the radicals of the kanji) and it's free:
http://jisho.org/

http://www.youtube.com/user/jp10IamMeNotU
In here Kouhei gives lessons and it can help people that are learning Japanese alone