Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-216.186.132.194-20150907000841/@comment-32500188-20151006120543

For self learning on a tight budget, I highly recommend checking out Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese website. It goes in depth with basic grammar, and also has PDF and app versions of the guide available if you want to reference on the go.

It's also handy to have a dictionary for unfamiliar words... I personally use Jisho.org for Kanji lookup (which allows you to not only look up terms by radicals, but draw the actual Kanji if needed), and Perapera Japanese when I'm actively browsing on my computer. (For Firefox, though...)

Of course, watching your favorite shows is a good way to immerse yourself in listening to the language itself, but I wouldn't recommend it as wholly reliable... it doesn't give the full effect of an actual Japanese conversation you would actually have in real life, since a majority of the time 相づち/aidzuchi (known as verbal indication of comprehension during a time another person is speaking) is hardly ever used in general conversations between the characters in anime shows... not only that, the voice-acting doesn't always give you the natural tone used in general conversation. I'd suggest looking up random Japanese videos on YouTube and listening to whatever conversations go on in them, or look for Japanese podcasts, or if you have an NND account, try to check out some of the live broadcasts users do if you're able to catch one active at a certain time.

(I have a few more things to add to this, but will mention them later... I'm kind of running behind for work.) (=A=)