User blog comment:B214/Question & Answers 5/@comment-74.213.68.208-20150420040229/@comment-26209278-20150420071746

Tae Kim has a nifty guide to learning the language. http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/

At first it seems scary, because there's so many characters, but it isn't as hard as it looks, it just takes dedication. Unlike languages like english, the characters only have one pronounciation (but they do have different pitches), so you don't need to learn different ways to say each one.