Couple of quick pointers wrt Japanese. First, human languages take a long time to get good at. If we think that children learn faster than adults (which I think is not actually true, but it's a widely held belief), then it will take you 5 years to talk like a 5 year old, 10 years to talk like a 10 year old and 15-20 years to talk like an adult -- minimum. If you study very effectively, I think you can double this speed, but no more than that. Adult level proficiency is 15-20,000 word families. Ignore anything that tells you that you can be proficient with 2,000 words of vocabulary (even a 4 year old has more than that!)

Specific advice about Japanese: forget polite form and learn plain form from the beginning. If you are in dire need of sounding polite, just put "desu" at the end of every sentence. It will be grammatically incorrect, but nobody will fault you for it (it's what children often do). The mapping from plain form to polite form makes total sense. The opposite is not true and complex sentences require that you master plain form, so this will reduce your effort considerably.

Also, learn to read. This is especially true if you are coming to Japan. Hiragana and katakana will take you a few weeks. Try to learn at least 100-200 of the most common kanji as well. This will take you only a month or so and it will make your life dramatically easier.

Learn full sentences and ignore grammar for the most part. I got to reasonable conversational level simply by memorising the example sentences in Tae Kim's grammar guide: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar. Use spaced repetition to help speed it up.

Get the JLPT N5 and N4 vocabulary lists and memorise them. Even N3 is useful. These are words that map pretty much directly with English without a lot of nuance, so memorising them is efficient. Otherwise learn vocabulary in context by reading. I recommend manga because it will give you conversational Japanese. There is no description in comic books -- only conversation. They are perfect.

Finally, get a phrase book and memorise some set phrases -- just to help you a long. Keep in mind, though, that a lot of phrases are regional and wherever you are going, they might say things a bit differently. Generally speaking you should be fine if you stick with common phrases, though.

4chan's /int/ has a daily thread with many ressources for learning Japanese. The basic recommendation is to get Anki and the Core 6k deck and the deck for the Dictionary of Japanese grammar. Grind those decks until you can read simple texts, then read as much as you can. The NHK for example provides news in simple Japanese http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/.

The Yamasa school there is a great little find. The prices are very reasonable and they do everything they can to make it foreigner friendly, ie providing housing with thick walls, simple leases and things.

Would recommend SILAC program which is mostly talking, even though I did the more formal class route, SILAC is probably more effective I think after learning more about how learning works

this guy has helped ME in so many of my language learning ventures. And he's relentlessly optimistic and encouraging.

http://www.fluentin3months.com/

He's learned Japanese (and like ten other languages), but his main value-add is general language learning advice.

You wouldn't happen to live in Atlanta, would you? (I know that's a long shot...)

Outside of work I program in Rust almost exclusively, and would love to hack on something with others.

I studied Japanese in high school, and I taught English in Hokkaido for a year, but I've since gotten rusty with my Japanese. I would love a study/accountability partner to pick it back up again.

I live in Tokyo. Will treat you to beer and yakitori if you make it.

Good luck with Japanese. People often describe it as one of the hardest languages in the world, and you can understand why: three written systems and grammar and vocabulary that changes based on whom you're speaking to and what it's about. But once you learn the rules (and there are many), there are few exceptions compared to English. So it's a lot of work on the front-end. Don't let that discourage you.

wrt Japanese, get comfortable with the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. Verbs in English are often both (ambitransitive) and that makes you (or maybe it's just me) unaware of the difference. It took me more time than I care to specify to sort that out in my head!

And be confident! Japanese people are generally supportive and will appreciate your effort to use the language, no matter how successful it is.

Espanol para mi.