/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Hello, lads.

It's embarrassing to admit this, but I need some guidance on how to proceed with my studies.

I was a WK (yeah, I know, it's not great) for a while but recently I've just given up on it, for several reasons. I don't want to pay eight dollars for the privilege of being bombarded with hundreds of reviews a day, and learning kanji haphazardly has done little to help me understand any Japanese et all. Being at level 20, I can read most kanji and vocabulary to an extent in sentences, but if you asked me if I understood it, I would hang my head in shame.

I've started doing a Japanese course on grammar earlier this year but I feel like it's way too slow, the materials are bad and I'm not satisfied with it. The solution given would be to read Tae Kim, but I've read a few topic and had to stop myself to ask "Am I going to retain any of this if all I'm doing is just reading through it?", so I'm not keen on that idea quite yet.

I "know" around some 500 kanji, some 2000 assorted vocab terms, almost no grammar. I'm not sure I want to start a Core deck from total scratch. Should I just suck it up and trust that reading Tae Kim through will facilitate my understanding of the language? Should I pick a Core deck up? I've got an N5 if that's any measurement of my level in Japanese.

Apologies for the generic questions, but I'm at a real standstill. I don't want to start from scratch and I don't want to drop everything I've managed to retain so far either.