Postby mmmason8967 » January 26th, 2014 9:01 pm
I think it depends on what kind of learner you are. I tried learning hiragana using flashcards and, for me, it just didn't work at all. Eventually I gave up and tried the Kantan Kana video course that Natsuko recommended to you, and it worked really well for me. In fact, I did the whole video course over one weekend, learning hiragana on Saturday and katakana on Sunday.
The key for me was following along and writing all the characters. When you learn to write the characters, it's easy to tell the difference between the ones that look similar (for example ぬ, ね, め, わ and れ, or は, ほ, ま and も) because you know how they're put together. It also makes it a lot easier to read Japanese handwriting and stylised print fonts--again, because you know how the characters are put together.
マイケル
