Learning Japanese (methods)?

I lived in Fukuoka, Japan, for a year in the city, 20 miles away from the Army base. My landlord found a teacher who met with me regularly for conversation! It sounded complicated, but I finally got enough to travel around the island by myself. What intrigued me most, was the simple Hiragna and Katakana native script--not the Chinese idiograms. There were 56 sounds and all phonetic! AND it read from top to bottom and from right to left! I was naturally left-handed, but when I was young, the teacher forced me to switch to my Right hand! ("Right is RIGHT; and left is WRONG!" and teacher and cl would chant! Needless to say, I was a mess! I started stuttering and stammering and couldn't read! Flunked and had to repeat First grade with the same teacher! TRAUMA! Learning to read Japanese seemed to heal my reading disability! And I picked up my first books in ENGLISH and read for pleasure for the first time in my life!------And yes, as I remember, compliments were always answered, "Neh! Neh!" ("No-no!")----For me, having the teacher with me was the most helpful for me! Helps with learning to think in the language, instead of having to translate in my head! Hope you can find a native Japanese person to converse with you as many times a week as possible! ---I had majored in French in college, and later worked for the NSA (National Security Agency) in D.C. I ended up in the Vietnamese section, as the French had controlled Indo China for a hundred years and French was still an official additional language. I ended up getting to break low-escelon Viet Kong supply codes. This was all pre-computer days, and they had PhD mathmeticians breaking the high eschelon codes! I was never fluent in foreighn languages--not even English, but loved it all! Good Luck!! It's such a blessing to get into work that you love!