Recently I started to try and find out ways to learn Japanese online for free. Something that has not been a easy task but it has been something I have been wanting to do for awhile now. I suppose it is not to surprising that is difficult to find much in the way of learning another langue for free. My main goal is try and be able to read Japanese, partly cause I found I wanted to start playing eroge visual novels, but there are not many that have been translated into English.
I would also like to learn how to speak it as; assuming I find a full time job again and have the money. I would very much like to be able to travel to Japan. Possibly even move to Japan.
Right now I'm mostly trying to study two of the three character sets that is needed in order to read Japanese. hiragana and katakana. One site I am trying to learn Japanese through is Lentil: Learn Japanese. It uses a flash card style to teach the characters in hiragana and katakana, and so far I've completed the katakana characters.
I completed the katakana characters but I am still working on the hiragana ones. Main problem if have with this site is the characters it shows you don't always exactly look like the character they first taught you.
Hiragana and katakana are the two easiest character sets to learn though. Katakana is exclusivly used for writing foreign words in Japanese while hiragana is only used in combination with the last and hardest to learn kanji.
Sources
1. Lentil: Learn Japanese: http://japanese.lentil.com/