I can try to explain what I meant. "Naturally, as many people have reported, learning from anime doesn't work very very well". I couldn't find these reports, but anyway: I'm not saying that you should try to talk exactly like the characters, but that you should increase your listening comprehension by lots of exposure to real Japanese, which is what is spoken in anime. Real Japanese words, real sentences... Sub-standard? I'm guessing you meant "more intimitate/friendly", or else I would have to call my Japanese friends' Japanese "sub-standard". "Nikkei etc". Really? I wouldn't say the comprehension ability I got from passive listening was useless. Actually I can watch tv-shows in Japanese, movies etc thanks to it. And apparently it makes you learn words more easily. http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/about/newspubs/news/ViewNews.aspx?id=2455&newslabel=hn "Finally,..." Wait, was this a paragraph telling someone to ignore my advice because I'm not a master of Japanese and suspect failure who will get nowhere?! Oh, just my imagination. Yeah, don't listen to me. Wait, what!? Isn't this a site for learning languages? I thought we were supposed to help eachother here. It sounds a bit arrogant to just ignore anyone that hasn't yet mastered the language. Have you mastered Japanese yourself? The failure rate in learning Japanese is high because of the student's lack of motivation, not because Japanese is "hard" (actually I think it's pretty easy once you get a feel for it). Here's some advice: Try to listen to everyones' advice, if it works, good for you. If it doesn't, try something else. Studying Japanese at college can be useful if you want a degree, lots of friends with the same interest, exchange study opportunities, etc... but I still don't think it's the most effective way to learn Japanese, self study beats it by far. Just have fun. (by the way, shouldn't it be "テキサスに住んでいます"? but, I learned that from anime...)

You did not explain what you mean by "learn". (1) If "learn" means a few tourist level phrases, naturally the answer is: YES. (2) If "learn" means real adult conversation, naturally the answer is: NO. Modern college classes are designed to be the easiest and fastest way to really learn Japanese (despite claims from companies like P******r and B*****z, I've never met anyone who was able to use those companys' materials alone to learn real adult conversation). Contact the Japanese teacher at your nearest university and ask them what textbook and recordings/tapes they recommend, then pick up those materials from the college bookstore or from an online bookstore. It then takes about 1000 hours of study to learn basic level Japanese and an additional 1000 hours to learn the Kanji to be able to read a newspaper, speak like an adult, understand the broadcast news, etc. Naturally, as many people have reported, learning from Anime doesn't work very well. For one thing, much of the conversation in many Anime is sub-standard Japaneese, and people would look down on you if you spoke that way. Secondly, passive listening is almost useless to learn useful conversation as is well known from the experience of Nikkei in Hawaii, etc. were you find numerous people who grew up in with parents speaking Japanese to them, but are unable as adults to speak Japanese. Surely if years of daily passive listening in such cases is useless, then learning from passive listening to Anime is hopeless. Finally, when you get advice from a forum such as this, be sure to look at the person giving the advice. If they have not succeeded in actually learning Japanese yet, don't listen to them. The failure rate in learning Japanese is ultra high, so some people giving advice can be expected to be such people who themselves will get nowhere. I'd particularly suspect anyone who claims to be learning two or more ultra difficult languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc. at the same time.

College classes aren't the fastest way to learn Japanese anymore. Maybe they were before, but now you can learn Japanese faster using the internet. (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com , http://www.antimoon.com/) As an answer to the actual question: Yes, you can learn Japanese by speaking with Japanese people by headset, but it won't be very effective until you can hear what consonants and vowels are being used. If you like anime you could watch anime without subtitles, the voice actors speak clearly which will help you gain this "word recognition ability" or whatever you would want to call it. Maybe you wanted to say "tasukete kudasai" but didn't understand what characters the word really used and typed "tatsuketekore kudasai" (or maybe it was another word, but I can't really tell...) Anyway, I think you should learn from a lot of sources if you really want to get good at Japanese, just talking with people won't be enough. 1000 hours to learn basic level Japanese and 1000 more to learn the kanji sounds like a lot, but if you're having fun you'll be surprised at how fast you'll improve.