Hello. I am a Japanese who has the same problem when I learn English. In English some verbs take objects, while the others don't without prepositions. In my case, it didn't work to memorize which verb is a 自動詞 or not. I mean "TAKE, ok, it's a 他動詞, GO is a 自動詞", this kind of way is too hard for me. Instead, I read aloud sample sentences to absorb how the verbs work in the sentences like I GO TO THE STATION, I GO ABROAD, LET'S GO.... OK, it's a 自動詞. Besides, when I learned Spanish, it was hard to classify nouns because they have gender. The read-aloud method works in this case, too. El nino, la nina, el hombre, la mujer... But the most important thing is, I think, to enjoy learning another language. If your Japanese contains minor mistakes in usage of 自動詞 or 他動詞, we can understand it.

Hi Jakob! Thanks for your advice :) I did notice that more of the intransitive verbs are similar to the passive voice. Yeah, I think it's important to know because I don't think about transitivity at all in English, so the concept is foreign to me. Pun included. Haha. I think I'll try the flash cards and memorizing the words in context.

Not sure how you're studying vocabulary, but I started to just fail flash cards when I forgot if a verb is transitive or not. It was kinda hard (and heart-breaking) at first, but really helped in the long run. I also make sure that in most cases I write the answer in passive voice (?, I'm not so good at English grammar so I'm not if that's the right thing to say) when it's 自動詞, so for example when my card for 焼く would have "to cook", then 焼ける would read "to be cooked". Then as long as I remember that it's often trivial to figure out which is which. But there are also different opinions on this matter, a friend of mine who has been studying a year in Japan told me he isn't learning this at all, but uh, I think especially if you're coming from a language like English where differentiating between transitivity isn't required as often, it's something you should study to a certain extent. (I mean at least I think it also exists in English with stuff like "(to) fall" and "(to) fell" or "(to) sit" and "(to) seat" but well, I have no idea about English grammar.)