I caught the accent pretty quickly even though I'm American. Anime is another good way to get the accent. And those funny batsu games on YouTube.
Anyone who has an iPod touch or iPhone should get this app called Human Japanese. It's pretty good and teaches how to pronounce words very nicely.

Oh man, anime is a terrible way to pick up the accent.

Why is that?

Eh? When I was in Japan, apart from a very few anime characters who self evidently don't speak ordinary Japanese, the accents were already familiar. Sometimes I could even determine a rough area of origin.

Or maybe you're thinking that anime is all Sailor Moon and Naruto?

Josh,

I'm getting the same problem speaking Thai. I'm a big fella now, and have hit puberty long ago (you'll get there soon too, don't worry), so my voice is very deep. Yet Asian men rarely hit puberty before 40 or so, and their balls stay very small, and their voice is very high pitched. Because of this, even when I say perfect Thai, I am still misunderstood, because it is very deep, and Thai is a tonal language, and they've never heard these tones before. I often have to grab my balls and twist them slightly in order to hit the right notes.

The accent thing also comes into it. When I meet people from non white countries, I can always pick what nationality their English teacher was based on how they pronounce words; i.e. Asians also copy western accents when they learn our language.

For some sounds, they just do not exist in English, so you need to do a bit of copying, I think. Try and keep your own accent and depth (that is after you hit puberty) where you can, but you're going to have to copy some things to the T in order to be understood, that is fact.

Have you spoken to many Irish men? Their accent is very different and the sounds are way different; they're often hard to understand. Japan has different accents for different regions, but they are all fairly similar, as far as I know. At least, the difference between Irish and Aussie which is so vast does not exist in Japan. Point being, if you came into Japan speaking perfect Japanese, yet with an Aussie accent, the difference to them is going to be about the same as you trying to understand an Irish man; almost a no-hoper...

@marichan, girigiri

I lived in Japan and saw plenty of anime on TV while I casually flipped by it to watch the news. Please don't accuse me of being provincial and being only aware of Naruto (of which I've only seen 10 minutes my entire life, in a university classroom while I lived there) and Sailor Moon (which I watched over a decade ago).

My life, however, has been rich with experience of those who learned Japanese by watching anime. One example is a guy who would randomly quote stuff from Ranma like 冗談じゃないわよ when people were messing with him.

Finally, I can't really recall any anime I've seen that had nothing but characters who talked like normal Japanese. Under my belt are such seminal works as Sailor Moon, Ranma 1/2, Rurouni Kenshin, Love Hina, and many films. There's always some overexaggerated person in the show.

I think that you`re confusing grammar, vocabulary, and usage with accent. They`re not the same. Accent is inflection, intonation and pronunciation. As long as it is a native speaker, even if they were just spouting random words totally out of context they will be speaking with a native accent. It`s not what they`re saying, it`s the way they say it. If I were to ask you to read the most over the top sentence you would still read it with your native accent.
Any exposure to a native speaker of Japanese - whether it be in a classroom or just watching the most exaggerated character in an anime - will help with picking up a more native-like accent.

In other words, anime isn`t good for learning Japanese but there is nothing wrong with using it as a listening source - Just don`t try to imitate the accent of "foreign" characters. And remember to use proper sources for actual study.

Nyororin, you raise a very good point. I erred.

He would say 冗談じゃないわよ? I guess I can see why people were messing with him.

lol I'd rather leave him alone than mess with him. Couldn't stand who's probably a hairy man saying 冗談じゃないわよ to me.
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Hey Josh the OP, here's your fellow countryman Chad Mullane, a professional stand-up comedian in Japan. He speaks very good Osaka dialect.