[Fatentity]

I'm currently taking Elementary Japanese at my college, and getting a near perfect A (But it's just the basics, so, lol). If you are motivated and pay attention in the begging especially, it is not that hard. I found it actually some-what easy. So long as you learn to read Hiragana pretty well and as the person above me said learn the grammar/sentence structure, then your off to a good start.

Then again I really like the book I have, and our teacher rocks, so that may play a part in learning it well. I think most of it though is having good material with great explanations and examples as well as just simply the drive to learn. Because I really don't put in more than 3 hours a week (Though I'm sure that will change the higher the level I get).