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Originally Posted by BobbyCooper
have you anything what you could recommend me Gah? For the language I mean'?
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Pimsleur audio's aren't bad for giving you some common sentence/phrase building words. College books are usually pretty boring and teach you the most formal way of speaking Japanese...which will be of little use cause like learning Spanish and trying to use it in Mexico, it's not the same.
Reading hiragana/katakana can be helpful but you will be hard pressed to actually read or write it but it can give you basic clues when reading a sign. Heck, most Japanese still have a hard time due to Kanji and having several meanings...show the same Kanji symbol to several people and you can get a different meaning every time. That's why it's never a good idea to get a "Japanese" tattoo
Try and find a genre of shows you like and look for a English subtitled version of it after you have done some word building...it gets you use to hearing a native speaker talk and you slowly pick up on the words you know and build from there. I watched Bleach
My first trip to Japan "Sumimasen, (Place) wa doko desu ka?" got me pretty much everything I needed. If they spoke English they usually recognized me as a foreigner and replied back...if they didn't they usually pointed the direction I needed to go or just walked me to the destination
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It shouldn't be hard to meet Japanese friends, they want to learn about you just as much as you about them. Many times when I was out eating at a ramen shop (Ippudo sooo good) people would ask me where I was from and just start asking me tons of questions. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to sing "Hotel California" at a karaoke bar.