Japanese Society

You will be fine for ages then haha, i've just finished my first year of university (and with it hiragan and katakana for the rest of the class), and apparently we don't start kanji until the third if that's anything to go by then you should be fine for a couple of years

Oh really? Did they tell you when you began what sort of level you would be at by the end of the three years? Yeah, i'd have no excuse not to get good grades then!

it's more geared towards conversational/real life situations as opposed to reading kanji i'm afraid. Whilst it's useful being able to understand conversation (even with only 1 Japanese person in the room as the teacher) i can't help but feel it's not 'proper' Japanese, as i won't be able to read the kanji haha

Hi guys! I'm an Indonesian-born Chinese but I absolutely love Japan!
i went there two summers ago and omg it was so awesome and i want to go back to japan
some people say i look japanese but when I went to japan and saw the girls they look nothing like me
i'm a huge pokemon gamer and i've watched a couple anime series. i self-studied a little bit of japanese lol

Have you seen naruto or bleach or fairy tail or code geass?

Hey guys, I speak Mongolian and I learn French, German, and I just started Russian. I'd like to learn Japanese - how should I start? Books or courses?

The basics are pretty easy to learn from things you can find online. You could start out by learning Hiragana and Katakana, just find a chart of the characters online and start writing them out and revising them until you know them. That was my first step anyway.

What's the difference between Hiragana, Katakana, and Hanji? Thank you! I will do this.

Let me have a go answering this...

First of all Hiragana and Katakana are syllibaries, made up of around 50(?) letters each. They represent sounds: a, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko... etc.

Kanji, contain an element of meaning not just sound. There are ~2000 kanji designated as "Daily-use kanji" by the Japanese government, though many more are in use.

Now what are they used for?

Hiragana = Most often used for the grammatical elements of the language like showing the conjugation of verbs/adjectives. Also used to write some words, auxiliary verbs, etc.
Example:
着る = kiru = to wear
着ない = kinai =not wear (negative)
着なかった = kinakatta = did not wear (negative past)
In this case the kanji 着 (ki) at the start doesn't change but the hiragana following it does.

Katakana = Most often used for writing loan words of non-chinese origin and foreign names. Also used for emphasis (kinda like italics in English), some onomatopoeia, scientific names, to write some words which have rare kanji or when you've forgotten the kanji, etc
Appropriate example :
グローバリゼーション = gulōbalizēshon = globalisation, from the English word.

Kanji = Used for the start of most verbs/adjectives, and most nouns including a lot of Chinese loan words. Also used for most personal and place names.

There's other things like sometimes spelling the same word out in hiragana can give a softer tone, as opposed to using the Kanji which would give it a more formal tone.
Think ありがとうございます vs 有難う御座います (= arigatō gozaimasu = thank you)

Hope I haven't missed anything important!

Wow, thank you and Paramore <3 so much for this!
I think I understand. So really I ought to learn the Kirikana first, because they're the essential ones? Gosh, isn't it quite hard then, because you have to learn all three?!
Again, thank you so much for your extremely helpful replies!

Yeah, you'll have to learn all three in the end, but most people learn hiragana and katakana first since they represent sounds and there's way less of them than kanji. As Paramore says, every Japanese word can be spelled out in kana (lots of childrens books don't use kanji), so if you learn kana first you can use them write any word before you learn the kanji for the word.

Learning hiragana/katakana is a 1 or 2 day thing. Learning Kanji takes considerably longer xD

As far as learning the kanji go, everyone has their own favourite method, but what personally worked for me was Heisig's Remembering the Kanji

omg i've seen naruto up until the very very VERY last shippuden episode and all of the movies

Ah cool Do you read the manga? I don't no spoilers!

Can't remember if I knew that already, but anyway, congratulations!