Members

I’ve never used RS but I have seen someone using it and it was a pretty shitty piece of software. Tons of ramanji and 0 kanji in sight. That was a while back so maybe it’s different now. I suggest dramas (いま、会いにゆきます is easy) and shoujo manga.

My suggestions would be to read manga, watch anime (without subs if you can, or just watch first without subs and then with to try to understand it better) and so on.

Beyond that, there’s a bunch of books out there which might help refresh your memory. Minna no Nihongo is one, though it is not without its flaws – it is, for instance, very liberal in its translations.

There’s also Human Japanese, software for the PC (use google!). The trial version is marvelous for people who want to learn the very most basic grammar and hiragana/katakana. A major disadvantage is the complete lack of Kanji though, so it’s only really good for spoken Japanese.

Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar guide (again, use google to find it) is also very useful for revising grammatical rules. A major disadvantage is however that it doesn’t properly teach the kanji, so it may leave you confused if you forgot those.

http://www.jlptstudy.com/ may also help. It is geared to the JLPT, but it can be used by non-JLPT takers as well – I used it to get a larger vocabulary before I began studying it at University. Disadvantage of those lists may be that they’re in alphabetical (well… Hiraganical? I don’t know, lol) order, which may make it less handy for learning purposes.

Best suggestion which I can give though: Find somebody to speak Japanese with. Another person studying the language (preferably one who has been doing so recently, obviously, and preferably somebody at a higher level to help correct you), an actual Japanese person or (best case scenario) a proper teacher will do wonders for you.

As for Rosetta stone, some people like it, some hate it. It all depends on what you like. Some people learn better through listening, others through reading. There are whole studies on that topic in the field of Second Language Acquisition (L2A). There is no universally ”best” method; try multiple and see which one works best for you. :)