Reddit mentions of Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged For Learning And Reference

The Tofugu guide is a really good place to start for new learners. The rules established are broadly applicable, and will quickly let you pick up the order with minimal cross-referencing the further you get in your studies.

Beyond that choose a reference you like for when you need to look it up (I'm partial to The Essential Kanji for a book or Jisho.org for electronic forms), but generally don't fuss over stroke order. Avoid trying to treat it as a distinct topic, simply practice it when you learn vocab/kanji and know that when your starting you'll probably be looking things up quite frequently. A few hundred kanji in you're guesses will start to become pretty good, and beyond that you'll probably stop thinking about it entirely.

It wasn't the alphabets that were hard (katakana and hiragana). It really was the kanji (3000 for high school level fluent, I got up to about 500 in 2 years). Some were intuitive, playing off of other kanji (tree = ki and if you draw three ki's in a triangle you get mori = forest), but many were just randomly throwing other kanji inside of kanji. You had single characters with 22 brush strokes.

Just needlessly complicated as hangul (korean written language) kind of demonstrates. I think Japan (according to some literature I used to read on it) is moving away from kanji being used colloquially though. It's being blamed on mobile phone auto-input. Kanji is kinda strange, you have to physically write it often to continue to understand it. If you just type it in over and over you might still forget it.

The hardest part in Japanese for me was just the connecting wards like "ga" "wa" "no" "de" "ni" etc... The rules for these aren't always consistent, it's almost like how English has some confusing rules for people learning it.

Overally really fun language to learn and it gave me a different perspective on language as a whole and made me a bit more culturally open-minded. I'd say learning as much as I did about it was a great addition. If I watch things that have references to Japanese language/culture it's nice to have some level of familiarity with the subject matter.

I watched the "Princess Kenny" episode of South Park for instance with the words they were saying in japanese. They had the lines written out in a typical way you would do for a Japanese television show, and the acting was consistent so I had an appreciation for the effort they put into that. One of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's friends is a Japanese guy they knew from college and was the narrator of their first animated film. You can tell he still consults them for episodes and does voices.

The Princess Kenny episode made me laugh really hard when one of the characters saw the anime-ized Princess Kenny and said "ikimashita" while blushing. Basically he said "I just came". So that was pretty funny since it makes sense in the context of the situation and how they are stereotyping for comedy the whole Japanese anime thing and otaku culture.

EDIT: Thought of another challenging thing about it. Sometimes people's names will have a different vocal strength given. There is Se-n-na and Se-n-NA for instance. Also there is Se-NA and SE-na. This is based on the kanji used in their name, and some words (more rare) have this same trait. I hear chinese is far more difficult in this way though. Pronunciation was probably my strongest point, regularly got compliments from the teacher for picking it up easily. It's kanji that was the hardest for me for sure.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%AC%B1

There's a kanji that uses 24 strokes.

鬱

If you want to get started, here's the dictionary I own.

http://books.google.com/books?id=jvwxRz7s_e4C&pg=PT14&dq=kanji+dictionary&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-KgpVK6qEIityATqvoKwCg&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=kanji%20dictionary&f=false

And this is my Kanji dictionary

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Kanji-Characters-Systematically-Reference/dp/0834802228/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412016500&sr=8-1&keywords=kanji

Making some genkouyoushi out of graph paper is great cheap way of practicing writing kanji.

http://www.halley.cc/nihon/patterns.html

My grammar/vocab study book was called "Modern Japanese" and it doesn't look like it's in print anymore. Too bad it was pretty strong for conversational. Here it is.

http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Japanese-3rd-English/dp/1878463098/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1412016610&sr=8-3&keywords=modern+japanese

EDIT2: Thanks for the gold!

Hi.

I used a lot of different material. Textbooks like the Genki series at first, then the Intermediate level text books from the same company afterwards. I also remember using an electronic dictionary by Casio, as well as Essential Kanji by P.G. O'Neill. I want to stress however, that reference material like kanji dictionaries alone will not really be sufficient – you need something else that really drives you towards learning, and I certainly had that.

I was very into Japanese music (garage rock and psychedelic music) and have an embarrassingly large collection of albums that I started collecting at young age. I would listen to lyrics, read liner notes, and perhaps most importantly read magazines about music.

I'm convinced I would never have been able to muster the dedication required to learn all the kanji if it had not been for my passion for music. This is because learning a widely different language is a daunting task. Fluency is not something a person will reach without truly dedicating themselves in a way that works for them.

So I can suggest combining a dedicated mindset towards studying with your interest for Japanese media of any kind, if you have that. I have known people who are into manga and anime (a world I know next to nothing about) and see it solely as entertainment, but very few of those people ever got serious about actually investing themselves in learning. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as we all have different goals in life.

Anyway, to sum it up a text book like Genki (through which you make regular progress) and a good kanji dictionary such as the one by O'Neill are a good foundation. But in the long run, it is more important to have something that lets you really use what you have learned. For me, that was my passion for music and everything related to it.

As I wrote in another reply, I had never actually spoken to a Japanese person before moving here, but I had been studying so much that I had been able to pass the most difficult JLPT and was comfortable reading and writing. Actually talking in Japanese is something I had to start from scratch after coming here.

Feel free to ask more questions if you'd like – I'd love to be of help.

Good question. There are a number of resources available. Essential Kanji was the one I started out with many years ago. It's a decent start for most people.

Once I got an Android phone, I grabbed the essential Aedict which is a pretty straightforward Jap->Eng Eng->Jap dictionary with kanji lookup, radical lookup, example sentences, etc. It is based on the WWWJDIC Collection. Since I always have my phone with me, this is my day-to-day translator. You can select a kanji/word and it will give you anywhere from 10 to 100 sentences using it. Includes grammar, too.

First of all, congratulations on getting Kana down! That's your first big step. As for learning grammar, I would strongly recommend the linked book series. This grammar dictionary is easy to read and gives you an easily format to reference back to grammar you may forget.

Grammar Dictionary: https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474638675&sr=1-1&keywords=dictionary+of+basic+japanese+grammar

With learning Kanji...I dare say that memorization by repetition is necessary here. I know that many people here advocate various flash card applications (anki, memrise, ect.) and depending on your study preferences those could work great! On the other hand, I personally learn by opening up a notebook and chugging away at writing and re-writing the characters. It's not fun, but it works!
Either way, a book I like for kanji learning is linked below.

Kanji: https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Kanji-Characters-Systematically-Reference/dp/0834802228/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474639597&sr=1-1&keywords=essential+kanji

Now when it comes to reading material, you probably don't want to break out the nearest copy of 1Q84 by Murakami to test out your next skills. Instead you may find it easier to go for some children's books while you grow accustomed to the language. They rarely use difficult kanji, and it's always accompanied by furigana when they do. I suggest a short story called "Momotaro the Peach Boy" to start out. There are plenty more like it that you can find online too.

Momotaro: https://www.amazon.com/Adventure-Momotaro-Kodansha-Childrens-Bilingual/dp/1568365284/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474639307&sr=1-5&keywords=momotaro+the+peach+boy

While I know it won't be easy learning to read a new language, I hope you keep at it. Who knows, maybe you'll even want to give speaking a good crack someday. Have fun and good luck!