Hey, welcome!!!!!

What's your end goal with Japanese? Do you want to watch anime or read manga? Or talk to people and live in Japan? Or what?

I'm a "beginner-advanced" (around N2 level on the JLPT), but it took too long to get here (about 1,5 years....) because the learning materials are so bad. So I really want to help you learn faster / get motivated if I can.

Well, I don't know about "end goal", but right now, I'd like to be able to read the manga I have that's untranslated. One day, I'd like to go to Japan, but I don't think that it's going to happen any time in the near future (too expensive!).

What manga is it? Because I can probably write some lessons on it so you can start reading it right away!

Yeah, it's really expensive to travel for any real amount of time! I'm going on a student loan >.>; There's various clubs you can join where you can stay with people for free in their homes, or stuff like couchsurfing services where you can sleep at someone's place for cheap, but there's still the plane tickets, food costs, travel costs within Japan itself, oh and all that stuff you'll wanna buy... To a normal person with a job it's not actually any money at all, I mean you can probably save all that money up in a year or two just by not eating out, getting a friend to cut your hair instead of going to the hairdresser, etc, but sigh.

Well, I have a lot of volumes of Pumpkin Scissors because, at the time, it wasn't published in the States past volume 6 (I think). Now it's being released digitally, but I've already gone and bought the raw copies so I may as well try my hand at it... Plus I have a couple of other things.

I don't mind looking up words, but it's the grammar that I find so frustrating. I can learn any number of vocabulary words, but without knowing how to put them into sentences that don't sound like a concussed two-year-old, vocab does me no good....

Cool, I found it here so I can get started right away!
http://matome.manga-free-online.com/?cat=1479

Here's the first volume:
http://matome.manga-free-online.com/?p=1496189281

Yeah, that's normally the case. To make matters worse, no textbook teaches the kind of grammar they use in manga (as far as I've seen) so even if you do study grammar really hard you're still not going to find half of it in your textbook probably.

Okay, I'm scrolling through the pages now and I'll list off all the grammar pieces I see on that first "page" of the first volume, can you tell me which ones you know / don't know?:

１。 い, く, き forms for words like ない、なく、かわいい、あつい etc（若い 力 → 若き 力）
２。で、も、でも（平時 で も ない）
３。の（時代 の 物語）
４。い-sound forms for verbs like ものがたる → ものがたり; plenty of other examples exist but i can't think of them right now (basically it means the thing being/doing the action or getting the action done to it)
６。た（past tense）
７。ッっ（君 ッ）
８。だ、ぞ（最中 だ ぞ）
９。が（陛下 が…）
１０。を
１１。あれる、ました（結ぶ → 結ばれました）
１２。て（ちょっと 待て！）
１３。って（なん だ って！）
１４。に（急 に）
１５。お-sounds for verbs（しろ＝する＋お）
１６。は（私 は）
１７。たら（だ っ たら）
１８。で（なんで＝なん で）
１９。how to count stuff (５日後 = 5 days later)

If you know all or most of those then I'll move on to the next bit and list the new ones that pop up there

Wait, volume 1? I actually have starting from volume 6.
I know some of that stuff, but most of it I'm seeing out of context. I'll poke around on that site though.

They don't seem to have the 6th volume so here's from the first part of volume 8:
http://matome.manga-free-online.com/?p=1496190241

１。ている、てる（開いて ます、して る、わかって る）
２。あれる（生む —> 生まれた）
３。的、な（本格 的 な やつ）
４。ぬ（忘れぬ）
６。よう（忘れぬ よう に）
７。の when not meaning "ownership"（する の は）
８。き again（古い —> 古き）
９。と when not meaning "together with"（美徳 と は）
１０。にして、にする（往々 に して）
１１。も（で も ある）
１２。から
１３。じまう、しまう、ちゃう（おっ死んじまう）
１４。ん when not meaning "hmm"（ん だ）
１５。って（合理性 って もの）
１６。い-sound as a verb ending at the end of a clause/sentence（を 表し）

Edited 2017-06-14 10:18 am (UTC)

Yo, how's it goin'? I don't mean to pressure you, but I can start writing help for you whenever you check out the chapter / say which grammar points you don't know.

You might also be interested in the "animelon difficulty list" I've started making here on the comm, if you think this series is too difficult but you want to try some other random series.