i've spent a decent amount of time trying to learn japanese. have i succeeded? no. but i did explore a lot of resources and guides and stuff and here's a compilation of stuff i've found useful
DO NOT USE DUOLINGO. Duolingo isn't good for learning japnese. i also am very skeptical on the whole "gamification" aspect, i find these things to be gimmicky and focus more on making you feel like you're making progress over actually making any. i'd adise not touching it at all
the path ahead of you
i don't care who you are. start with hiragana and katakana first. THEN you can explore your options
hirgana and katakana
these are essentially the two base writing systems (there's four in total, roumaji (japanes words written in english) and kanji (the scary huge number of symbols used to form words). learning these is essential to getting the pronouciation correct and reading is a skill you can hone over your entire course of study to get really good at it
tofugu hiragana mnemonics guide - use this to learn hiragana. the same page has resources on other things, the whole website is a useful resource
test yourself by using this - realkana. can use this for katakana later too
finish learning hiragana and katakana using these two things, there's other resources in the tofugu guide you can refer to
the routes
now here's the thing; you have options. naturally every guide will tell you different things, and they're all valid, i'll try and condese all my knowledge in the next sections but please keep in mind that i'm simply presenting you with options, as a "if this is what you want, do this." way of explaining it. so you'll have to choose what your priorities are. one advice? do what's fun. as long as you're learning something, it doesn't matter what order you take, sure, you might have to make minor corrections later, but say you get addicted to learning kanjis and don't wanna do grammar at all, that's fine! just learn a shit ton of kanjis. eventually when you get bored, you can focus on grammar. i don't think you need to worry too much about taking the "correct route" right away, just make sure you're progressing somehow.
to give you an idea of things, after you learn hiragan and katakana, you have to learn a few more things, broadly, grammar and vocabulary. in my honest opinion, you learn both these things side by side, but yet, the first few weeks or months, you will have to prioritize some things over others based on what you want to do/
i'll explain these routes first and then list out how to study the things/resources later after this section.
should i learn kanji?
possibly the hardest part about japanese is kanji. do i learn kanji? what is a kanji? what are readings? there's a lot of confusions with kanji. naturally i'm not here to teach you kanji, but here's my advice with probable routes for you.
if you aren't VERY serious about japnaese, don't learn kanji. not right away, at least. this is a controversial take but in my honest opinion, if you're only learning japanese for say, watching anime. you don't NEED kanji. granted, i would recommend you learn it EVENTUALLy, i don't think you have to learn it right away.
now you CAN learn words without kanji, it's just that because of japanese having a limited number of sounds, there's many similar sounding words, the differences are with pitch, which is a whole different thing but in writing, you kinda need kanji to easily read. regardless, if reading and writing (or typing, rather) aren't big concerns, i'd say skip kanji for the initial few stages. you can learn words a LOT faster if you don't study kanji.
as i said, extremely hot take. so if you want to study kanji still, go for it! if you're unsure, i'd say try to learn kanji and see how it's going for you. if you find it's too draining, drop it. if you can do it or god forbid, find it fun, keep doing it! any learning is useful
soo.... leaarn words?
words. right, study words. my personal advice is that before studying grammar, you learn a few words. just very basic ones, some simply nouns, a few adjectives, a few verbs. 5-10 will do. just study a few, ones you want to know. kanji? no kanji? your call once you're done with that, you can start grammar.sooo... grammar?
grammar! you have to. but not necssarily properly.
what?
i don't think you have to learn grammar to a masterful level. when you first start out, i'd say just read up about grammar, try to let these concepts sink in as much as possible, don't be too worried about getting them drilled in perfectly, try to gain an awareness of their existence.
think of it like this; in english, you have "aisha's car." in that phrase, the grammar concept is used is the 's to show that the car belongs to me. with awareness of that, if you saw this sentence in a tv show, you'd be able to pick it a few times, and once you see it used naturally enough times, you'll understand how to use it yourself. so my point is, gain awareness of them and slowly let it sink in
you'll probably have to watch/read about grammar multiple times before it FULLY sinks in, if you can learn it all in one go, brillaint! if you can't, just try to do it best you can.