The first barrier to learning any language is learning how to pronounce it (at least somewhat) accurately.

Specifically, you want to be able to read it out loud.

Accordingly, we should start by learning the Japanese syllabaries, hiragana and katakana — the Japanese "alphabet," so to speak.

Lucky for you, we have an awesome course on this:

If you cannot yet read hiragana and katakana, please go complete that course before doing anything else. You won't be able to read any of the study materials I'm introducing if you can't read the kana (=hiragana and katakana).

The course should take maybe 6-8 hours to complete. That's a wild guess, but I doubt it's too far off.

Once you've got hiragana and katakana mastered, you can...