Hi!
My experience about learning japanese was very good but I sadly had to stop it due to work (my job) priority.
To resume, I didn't found it very hard:
- first: you learn the 46 hiragana, try to make five a day, the -a -i -u -e -o in each kind of syllab, i.e ka, ki, ... ta, chi, .. sa, shi, ... Normally you should take 3 weeks to a month. A good thing is to learn vocabulary using the hiragana you 're knowing while learning them, it is a good way to word assimilation (personaly I worked on fish and animal names, good stuff!).
- second: the next month, you do the same with the 46 katakana: used to spell foreigner (gaijin) words. Be careful, if you are like me and focuse only on true japanese word, you may less retain in your mind katakana than hiragana.
- third: now you are ready for grammatical lessons; Don't worry, you'll learn some of the 1945 kanji with time during your lessons. Don't remember that as in young schoolboys books or upon the name of the train's stations, you have the furigana, that means upon the kanji (or hanzi in chinese, that means the chinese character), you'll have the syllabic hiragana, so you can read the words.
- forth: as a french, I can say that japanese conjugation and grammar isn't very difficult (and it is more obvious as I learnt some latin). So you have to learn the polite conjugation (as a gaijin it is essential), then the neutral (casual) one (to understand, usual in anime or movie, for exemple), and after the adjectives conjugation (a thing that I found outstanding and very very interesting).
With that and a little vocabulary, you should not understand all, far away from this, but you'll have quite the basis, and I believe they are the good ones. I think with that if you're lost in Tôkyô and need to ask your way, if you have the appropriate vocabulary (not less than 400 words and verbs, it is a minimum!), you should do your way through.
As I'm not japanese, I can't say all of this would be OK, but if some natives are reading this, I'm sure thay could offer more information or correction about what I'm saying. (and their well-known kindness certainly would help you).
Expecting I could have helped you too,
Kitsune
