Is it better to learn Japanese yourself or take a class?

I started in a class, so I learned my Hiragana/Katakana/Basic Kanji while in school. I've been out of school for a few years now and I just started to finally self study. While school is great, I never felt motivated to study harder than I needed to. Now that I'm self studying, I feel more inclined to actually study :)

From my experience, I would definitely recommend getting a solid foundation via at least a semester or two of traditional classes.

An alternative if you're living in Japan is to check and see if there are any community education centers setup in your ward. They are basically free (I think they asked for ~500円 per month to help with supplies and such) and run by volunteers in their free time.

For instance there were 2 different ones in the area I lived so I went to classes 2 times a week. This way you get to interact with a japanese person face to face, and was around 1.5-2 hours once a week per class.

Usually you can get comfortable with a sensei and they can tailor their teaching to your needs.

I've studied nearly all of what I know myself. When I started University I joined a part time Japanese class which I thought would be great, and it was but because the people in the class were only just beginning I knew more than them and so I couldn't really get into it as much as I had hoped I would.
This kind of put me off the whole study in a class with others option which is a shame because I have no-one to practise with.
This Lang-8 option looks really, really good.

For me I need to study in a class. I'll try to study at home but after a while the motivation and the regularity disapear. Within a class, ready or not you have to study. And if motivated you can study more at home.

I've got a combination of classes and self study at the moment but I really think that classes help with motivation and when you are beginning. I like being able to focus on study at home but being able to converse with classmates to use new words.

Lang-8 is a great website, I know I've always learned new things from the other users!

I started off with a year at a university here in Sweden and that really got me going. I don't think I would've ever gotten to it unless I didn't take that course. Now that I know the basics I find it rather easy to self-study. However, I didn't really like studying at the university as I couldn't focus on the things I wanted to, my hobby became too much of a chore. Because of that I dropped out at the end of the year and continued on my own.

From my experience I would recommend taking a shorter course (~6 months) if you're starting from scratch, and perhaps later on join some kind of conversational class if you don't have anyone to speak to.
While all parts of Japanese are important, personally I like to put the weight on practical Japanese rather than being forced how to write 30 kanji a week. I want to learn to speak and read Japanese first, since if you know that you'll also be able to write on the computer. I don't want to waste time on stroke orders, as i extremely rarely write anything by hand, and when I do it doesn't really matter what language it's in as it's 99% of the times a post-it note or a design sketch. Having said that, I will of course eventually get to that as well.

My course also included a history class, which isn't really relative to my interests. So, if you're going to take a course I'd recommend you to really look into the classes in it beforehand. If there are a lot of classes that aren't relative to your interests, you'll be able to spend less time on what you really want to learn.

I'm a terrible student. I never do homework and I never study at home. I've tried private lessons and class lessons and even I felt private lessons were better, since they were personal. In a classroom, I just never gave attention. In fact, those were given every Saturday morning and I was spending my time in class thinking about what I'll do during the rest of the weekend.

Learning by myself? I'm too lazy to open a book! I'm terrible.

The only way for me to learn Japanese is to practice it, everyday, by speaking with people. That works for me.

I agree with needing both as I studied on my own and found that when I came to talk to people in Japanese I was less than average to say the least.

I could read and write no problem but listening and speaking really let me down. If you don't have any Japanese friends around then EduFire or Skype is a way to get in touch with Japanese speakers and practice. Plus there is always local tutors in your home town if you can afford it.

Chris - Might be worth listing out those books you show in the picture on this article. Most I am aware of but any heads up on good reading material would be appreciated by others I think.

I took two semesters of classes in Japanese and these gave me a really good foundation in basic grammar. But I think classes can only take you so far. If you were to rely purely on a class to learn to speak a language, you would end up speaking stilted and unnaturally. It's simply the nature of materials that are tailored for non-natives. As soon as possible I think it's important to engage with native materials. In order to understand naturally, you have to learn naturally. That's why I'm ultimately a huge fan of self-study when in comes to language. I've never heard of anyone who has reached any real level of proficiency in a foreign language purely though classes.

So you joined the community! Very nice:)

I started off with a university course and I'm glad I did because I don't think I would have gotten as far as I have without the pressure to do assignments etc. Also, while there are disadvantages to studying through university - things like only memorising for tests then forgetting, and not studying what you want or how, I would say I don't think I would have come to understand as much as I do now without the help or someone who knew how to explain these basics to me, because I wasn't really getting it from books. Now that I have the basics down I can move quickly at my own pace which is great and focus on the areas I want to or think I need to,.

I'm learning Japanese and taking it easy, haha. I'm listening to Pimsleur's Japanese on my iPod whenever I have the time.

now I am joining Lang-8, thanks for the info