[tenmins]

Same here. Romaji was key to my early studies. Started by making about 100 english / romaji flashcards from the vocab section at the back of my phrase book. Bumped it up to 500 after a couple of weeks, then to 1000 and so on. I learnt a small amount of basic grammar but really went crazy with the vocab. After only a couple of months I could understand what topics people on the train were talking about. After getting that far I then delved into the characters and some intermediate grammar. In fact by that stage just from lots of daily listening for the vocab when Japanese people were talking a lot of the grammar had planted itself in my head and when I did get around to actively studying it it was easy to remember.
So if you want quick results for listening go heavy on the vocab first.