Where to start?

[kageri]

Hello Snowfall,

I'm listening to the lessons since about half a year and can tell you the following from my experience:

I'd start with Newbie and Beginner Lessons. The Newbie season 1 jumps a little bit through a lot of stuff and you'll have a lot of fun with these (from season 2 on it will be more didactically).
The Beginner Lessons are a little bit more continous and the topics are nice choosen. I would recommend it from the beginning to the end as your main learning source.
If you dont want to learn everything together you can do the survival phrases later, you will hear a lot of the vocabulary in the other lessons and the memorization wont be so difficult then. I mix in a survival phrase from time to time as well as a culture lesson.

greetings
Kageri

[Snowfall]

Thank you, Kageri. That sounds like a good, logical plan. As many have suggested, I'm also working on learning hiragana and katakana.

I just found out, too, that a local community college is offering Beginning Japanese this Spring (first time I've seen this, so I'm very excited)! This gives me extra incentive to get a good start here with JPod. I'm looking forward to having someone with whom to practice! With luck and diligence, I'm hoping to get through the Newbie Series before class starts.

Thank you again for the suggested sequence.