Week one. Everyone online screams about grammar guides and kanji decks and I'm already overwhelmed. The input-first crowd here says just watch comprehensible stuff and let it sink in. Genuinely asking the people further along: did skipping the upfront grammar grind actually work, or did it bite you later?
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Skipped the upfront grammar grind entirely and I'm fine 70 hours in. Grammar didn't bite me later — it just quietly made sense once I'd heard the patterns enough. You're not 'skipping' it, you're learning it the way you learned your first language: in context, after hearing it a thousand times.
This is the reassurance I needed. Closing the kanji-deck tab and putting on Comprehensible Japanese instead.
Light grammar as a reference is fine — peek when something keeps confusing you. Just don't make drilling it the main thing. Input is the engine; grammar is the map you glance at, not the car.