Now that you can read Katakana, you might be curious to dive deeper. Here are some ideas, tips and resources to continue on your learning journey.
Learn Hiragana characters: If you haven't started with Hiragana, our mini-course on Hiragana is the natural follow-up after Katakana.
Learn the language: if you live in Japan, congratulations, everything will be faster. Otherwise, don't despair; in the age of the Internet, virtually living in another country is possible at any time of the day.
If you have 2 or 3 hours per week to invest, start a course in self-study or with a teacher. Favor proximity: perhaps you can find someone in your neighborhood or among your friends to converse with. Otherwise, there are, of course, many online course options.
Choose a teacher who follows the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This framework allows you to learn necessary words in a progressive and structured way. Learning without structure may give you the impression of knowing many words, but not of progressing or measuring your efforts by reaching a goal (advancing through levels A1, A2, B1, etc).
Be patient. Learning a new language is a marathon. Even when immersed in the country where it is spoken, it takes about 30 minutes to 1 hour of study or reading per day for about 1 year (300 hours) to start feeling comfortable in a language. It will then take at least another year before you can read or start understanding movies and series.
If you lack time, you can still learn many things on your own. With the help of a dictionary or an automatic translator, look up simple words for objects in the house, kitchen, family, food, and progress from there.
Keep reading: You can come back to this course at any time and take final tests to practice reading. The final tests include many words suitable for the beginner level (A1).
You can also practice reading store signs, restaurant menus, searching for images on the web... Tip: Write words on sticky notes and stick them on the refrigerator or near your desk. This way, you will sharpen your visual memory with passive knowledge.
There are many online radios or videos to listen to content in a language. Without formal lessons, you will understand little, but training your ear to the sounds of a language is always a plus.
One of our favorite sites to find and listen to radios from around the world is Radio Garden.
Writing new characters requires concentration and can be a very relaxing artistic activity. You can achieve visually pleasing results with very little material: choose a few words you like, take a blank sheet, a brush or a colored pencil, and get started. You will be surprised.
Japanese characters are written in a specific order, and there are many online resources that describe the "stroke order". Our favorite resource is the Kanji VG project where you can type a character (Hiragana, Katakana, or Kanji) and see an animation of the stroke order!
Here is the complete alphabet for inspiration.