My friend learnt japanese over the course of 6 months, and he says its tough to master, but easy to learn the basics at least.

Edit: He went to a tutor.

Going to language classes? I don't think there can be more effective ways than that. Also, of course you should practice, watch and hear content in Japanese and learning things by yourself.

I'm learning Japanese too! We can practise with each other, if you'd like. There are many ways of going about it, but a big suggestion of mine is: ditch Roumaji as soon as possible! Make learning Hiragana and Katakana your first step, and then try to start learning Kanji as soon as possible. Also, I'd recommend learning the plain/dictionary form of verbs first, and then learn how to conjugate from there.

Well, instead of watching things dubbed into Japanese, watch content that's originally in Japanese.

What I don't get is how the hell can you ever learn to read Japanese or Chinese. Just a bunch of weird looking symbols. Plus don't they write up and down or right to left or some weird shit like that.

The best way in may experience (I learned Japanese for about 8 or 9 years culminating in a year abroad there to study it intensively) is to be around native speakers. It's great to find other people learning to help, but you may find that you both end up supporting bad habits in each other you don't realize you started.

Ultimately, I find there is a great line between being intermediately good in Japanese, and being truly advanced. I'm not sure I ever crossed that line, it takes intense dedication, and really has to be your primary interest. The problem is that Japanese is not a single-use language, it's basically comprised of multiple styles, or "sub-languages" I guess, that each get used in very particular situations (speaking to friends sounds much different than speaking to a boss, down to the words themselves). It's incredibly hard to juggle in your head, and it's something even native speakers have trouble with.

I hope you can, though! Just remember that thanks to those different forms of Japanese and Kanji, Japanese takes far longer to truly get good at than most other languages, especially European ones which share commonalities. Luckily you'll have a pronunciation advantage, as it's pretty easy for most Western-language speakers to pronounce Japanese sounds.

If you want textbook recommendations, for beginners you can't get much better than Genki.

Learning Kanji is the hardest part for sure, but it's easier in Japanese because they use a combination of Kanji and Kana, which is phoenetic. Japanese is often written up->down, right->left (the traditional method, used in books), but it can be used horizontally left to right too.

Basically you can read it by being constantly bombarded by it 24/7, and practically no other way. Japanese and Chinese students go through intensive learning in middle and high school to get a couple thousand memorized. There are advanatages to it, particularly if you're a visual person, in that words are often constucted using kanji that are representative of ideas. It's basically how root woods work in English (television = tele, distant; vision, to see), and can simplify reading if you've truly memorized it all and understand how the words are constructed. It sounds daunting from outside, but native speakers can't imagine not using them.

Consistency, time and dedication. Easier said than done, this is not something you can do casually but if you're willing to seriously commit then that's all you need.

The best method is to introduce as much of the language you can into your daily life. But for now just get a basic hold of how the language works, then start learning the vocab. If you're still sticking to it in about 6 months from now then the sky's the limit.

Also look for opportunities to get involved with other learners or speakers, and consume Japanese culture and media. Good luck!

Actually, I'd say that Chinese Hanzi is easier than Japanese Kanji, because almost every Kanji has a least two readings, many being multisyllabic, while most Hanzi has one pronunciation, and every single Hanzi is only one syllable long.

Well, you're just going to have to get over it, I guess.