[komishika]

いらっしゃいます!
[irrasyamasu! - welcome]
私はコミシカです。
[watashi wa komishika desu. - I'm komishika]

I started learning some japanese back in fall of 2005. I took 1 year of class for it and have forgotten a lot, but also learned a lot from japanese music and anime.

My best suggestion to your trouble with hiragana is this (this also applies with pinning down katakana and new kanji as well)
Everyday, for however long you feel that day write them and speak them as you write them. And just keep copying them over and over. Do it for however long period of time that it takes for you to learn and remember them when you see them and need to write them.
Just start with a line either going across with the vowels or same consanent or by vowel.
I need to do this again cause I go in and out of phases where I'm reading a lot of japanese.
I see that you're into manga, if you have the chance to purchase some manga tankouban (the original japanese books) purchase them to read. Most kanji in tankouban have furigana for the kanji, so it will help strengthen your reading and recognition of hiragana and possibly help you learn some kanji as well.

The one thing I always learn new kanji from is songs. I listen to a lot of jrock and jpop and I like to take the lyric booklets and try to read/sing along with the song. And per usual a nice kanji dictionary can help with kanji meanings as well.