So as you may well know, i have recently started a course with BYU in which I can get a full high school credit for completing a "semester" of online Japanese. The best part is that I can finish the course as fast or slow as I want, which is sooo perfect because I already preferred to learn Japanese on my own time anyway. Here is what I've learned:
First off, if you already know at least Hiragana, GOOD, because it comes up fairly quickly and is tested in a way that would require someone who didn't know it to learn it/memorize it all. Therefore my knowing it made my fly through a section and feel like a BOSS. Once again, I highly recommend Let's Learn Hiragana by Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura.
Either way, don't worry too much because there are no deadlines (at least in my case) and as long as you have already completed some Japanese-oriented-self-nerding-out on the internets you should do quite well. I honestly think it'd be kinda rough if you had no experience/exposure to Japanese previously.
HOWEVER, that doesn't mean the course is bad if you don't know any Japanese, it just means I'm more comfortable with the sentence structure at first sight than you, not to mention a few particles and some vocabulary. SO, obviously the solution is quite simple: do some Japanese-oriented-self-nerding-out on the internets ^v^ Since you are most likely here because you're not entirely sure what you're doing, I've tried to compile all the sites I found useful in my fetus exploration of Japanese.
http://tangorin.com This is reeeally helpful and I encourage everybody to just explore it. Looking up stuff under Example is quite informative.
http://animeworld.com/japanese/lesson2-2.html This site really helped spell out some basic this, that, there, here stuff for me.
I'll put more here later ^^
Of course, once you've gotten some vocab and sentence structure down, I would advise finding an anime that you enjoy enough to watch because that is the HUGEST thing ever and it is the MOST important thing that you miss out on by taking an online language class: having someone talk to you in the language. The longer you're interested the more you'll pick up in anime, and I promise that if you're anything like my you'll squeal a little when you're picking up full (if super-short) sentences at regular speed in anime ^v^
I also helps a lot with your pronunciation which, unless you practice, will NOT improve. I can promise you that. HOWEVER, even without talking to yourself a lot or repeating Japanese words and phrases, acquiring a decent ear for it by watching anime is very important and extremely helpful.
You may be a little averted at this point because I mention anime so much, but it is really truly the best medium for any teenager or even much older to listen to Japanese through because A) it is already in high demand, and as such is readily available on the internet, and B) there are so many genres that I believe it's not hard to find something to your liking. You also may not know much about it, in which case I suggest this post of mine that is perfect for introducing it and also has a few of my favorite anime shows.
If, of course, you've had very limited exposure to anime, here are the most popular sites for watching it and the best ones I've seen over the years (though I'm not the most avid anime viewer).
http://www.crunchyroll.com/ This site may seem a bit overwhelming but it's great for viewing anime. It does have a lot of commercials though, about 4 per 20 minute episode, which is the average anime ep. length. However, unless you watch the end credits it can be cut to 3.
http://www.animeflavor.com This place is awesome for discovering stuff because it's main page is covered in the top new episodes/shows and the bar on the right gives you the option to choose a genre to explore. It also only has 1 commercial for most shows, right at the beginning.
http://www.watchcartoononline.com I mostly use this site just to watch Adventure Time, but it has a lot of anime both subbed and dubbed.
Also! A brief FYI for the complete novice, subbing and dubbing are very different. A subbed, or subtitled episode has Japanese audio (or just the audio of the original language it was broadcasted in) and is subtitled in your language (meaning if you speaka the englés you needa look up english subbed things). However the sites I just gave you and most sites are subbed in English so don't worry bout that. Dubbing is similar in those terms, it's usually gonna be in English as well. When you think dubbed think of those horribly voiced of Godzilla movies haha it's a lot like that, but most animes, if officially dubbed, are done quite well to match the character's mouth.
HOWEVER, since you are supposedly watching this for Japanese listening opportunities, A) you should watch only subbed shows and B) subbing is always way better in terms of the voice actor and the voice acting, in general just way better.
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