I’ve struggled with katakana for a long time, mostly from lack of exposure. I recently added iKnow as a complement to my WK routine and it drills on a ton of loan words in katakana. Need to learn to read them and spell them and I’ve noticed a big improvement in katakana.
ヱビス beer is still spelt with the ヱ, even though the neighbourhood of Tokyo which was named after it is now spelt えびす.
Yes, well, the French word “poupon” sounds like “poop on” in English. 
Was the beer named after the neighborhood? I was never sure if it was named after that or, you know, the god.
It’s actually easier to find examples of ヱ than it is ヲ.
The beer was named after the god. The neighbourhood was named after the beer.
After Googling to check that, I learned that Sapporo also made Space Beer, and even though I hate beer, and it cost 10,000 yen. I want some.
I think they really missed an opportunity of naming the beer Kotoshiro-nushi-no-kami
Is outer space named after that beer?
Oh yea, before they invented Space Beer, Outer Space was known as “The big black thing”
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I just wrote out the katakana syllabary every day for about a year. Now I have no problem reading or understanding katakana. It helps to have a clear grasp on pronunciation, too, since that will drive the transliteration.
I earned katakana in few hours with Learn Katakana: The Ultimate Guide very easy
Here’s my sure-fire way to learn katakana:
- Get intimidated by katakana
- Try to learn Devanagari
- Realize how much simpler katakana is and learn that instead
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Personally, it’s lack of exposure. I think if I took the time to write my notes in kata as well as hira, even though it’s not technically correct, I’d probably have fewer problems. I do have an Android app that tests you drawing them, which is my biggest issue, but it’s still in development and makes errors sometimes which makes it frustrating - gana I know will be marked incorrect when I just positioned it poorly because I was doing it quickly.
For the most part I can read it, might take me a second, writing is the issue. Also tells me I need to start writing Kanji a bit now that I’m working through this, as otherwise I’ll be able to read fine but really struggle to write it by hand (even if that’s considerably less of a big deal, as it’s rare it will be required).
Are these “Laser Armor” and “Thundersword”?
I have never seen this combination トゥ, by logic it’s supposed to be a “tu”, which is not “tsu”?
I feel the need to post this 
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Yeah, it’s how you make English sounds like the “to” in “tomorrow”. As in トゥモローランド.
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It’s Leather Armor and Two Handed Sword from Star Ocean FDR.
Yeah that one threw me for a loop too. The only reason I could figure it out is the guy wielding it looks like this:
These also took me a second to figure out:
アイアングリーブ iron greaves
スエードブーツ suede boots
Set your phone language to Japanese. You’ll see スヌーズ frequently every morning.
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I like this point about acquiring more facility with kana going from readable with great effort to automatic over a long period of time. There are certain hiragana that are more instantly available even after a few months, but katakana reduces me to a beginning reader sounding out ‘cat’. Names are especially amusing to me for some reason, after I decipher them - “oh! That’s Mary!”
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Perhaps indicative of how often I actually read my phone, it has been in Japanese for probably around 6 years at this point, and I literally never consciously noticed that until right now.
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Same here 
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I recommend picking up the “Japanese From Zero” textbook. He teaches like 5-10 katakana characters per chapter while teaching you the grammar so you can still progress while you learn. Throughout the book the words will be a mix of romaji and katakana characters that you know (for example, in the early chapters “dog” may be written as “いnu” and later on after you learn the “n*” characters it will be “いぬ”.
I found that easier than rote memorization