You definitely have the right attitude, my friend! Keep at it!
Your comment about the structure being the opposite of English is a popular view, but it's not actually true! I quote Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar (
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/), which is a fantastic resource:
Grammatically complete and correctly ordered sentences
（１） 私は公園でお弁当を食べた。(わたしはこえん� �おべんとをたべた）
（２） 公園で私はお弁当を食べた。
（３） お弁当を私は公園で食べた。
（４） 弁当を食べた。
（５） 食べた。
So you see, as long as your particles are in the right place and the verb is correctly conjugated at the end of the sentence, you're golden!
I don't know any sites for meeting Skype users, but if you go into skype, enter the Contacts menu and click "Search for Skyper Users...", you can put in your own parameters and see people's "personal ad". There are a lot of great people out there looking for language exchange, but also a lot of weirdos, so be careful.
It IS scary talking live to someone you don't know in a language you also don't know so well, but that's natural. I get all ドキドキ when I call people who speak ENGLISH that I don't know! Hehe...
Oh yeah, and MAKE MISTAKES! You have to. Here's why: when you make a mistake, it's really embarassing, right? Well, that embarassment sticks out in your mind and I guaruntee you will not make that mistake again. It's a VERY important part of the learning process, but like I said, just make sure they catch it and correct you, or ask after the sentence!
Your ultimate goal is realistic, except for the "most Japanese" part, but you corrected yourself in the next sentence. In one year, you can DEFINITELY be conversationally fluent! You won't know EVERY grammar point and your vocab will of course need work (it always will), but by that time you can know every conjugation and have a very solid vocab base. I sucked at Japanese when I went over, and in three months I was already chatting it up with the locals pretty smoothly. If I can do that in three months, imagine yourself in a year!
2 hours a day is great if you can dedicate the time, but it's all HOW you study. If you just read the book, you'll only retain a very small amount. If you take notes, you'll retain more. If you write each kanji 100 times, you'll remember it. If you use the vocab and grammar in your own sentences, you'll internalize the theory. If you say them out loud, you'll help your pronunciation and get your mouth used to the language. If you discuss them with a native speaker, then you're really in business.
So it's all about how efficiently you study!
Also, worse comes to worst you can hit me up on Skype or wherever and I'll help you out.
