Immersion. Listen to Japanese music all the time, watch lots of Japanese things (all kinds of things). Just hearing the language will help, even though it all s

Immersion. Listen to Japanese music all the time, watch lots of Japanese things (all kinds of things). Just hearing the language will help, even though it all sounds like gibberish. Your brain will start to sort out the sounds and accents by itself, though it won't be that fast. As a Spanish-speaker, you already have a lead on English-speakers with the accent, since the vowels are the same. Decide what your goal is. Do you want to be conversational in spoken Japanese? Do you want to be able to read/write well? What's your target level? Situations? Learning business Japanese is very different from learning everyday Japanese. Get a textbook you like and stick with it. Study at least an hour everyday. Find CDs you can mimic. Use Skype and find people in Japan you can chat with -- there are plenty of people who will love to do a language exchange with you. Skype was a godsend for me in college; when I was in my second year of Japanese, I spent hours every day on Skype finding people in Skype Me mode and just chatting. Don't be afraid to look stuff up online. If you want to look something up in Japanese, do it, and then see what you can read. Write down what you can't, learn it, and then you have a context to put it in to help you remember better. The only really solid tip I have is to learn your katakana and hiragana now. Brute-force it with flashcards and learn them in a week or two. Romaji won't get you anywhere; it's hard for people to separate romaji from their native language (if it uses the Roman alphabet). Best of luck! Scott