[buu700]

I actually just started learning Japanese in my free time a few nights ago. (No particular reason aside from that it seemed like fun.)

I've got nothing really to add here, except that I've been using LingoDeer (another app in the same category as Duolingo) based on recommendations in /r/LearnJapanese, which if nothing else has made the process feel less like schoolwork and more like a game.

Hiragana and katakana weren't hard to pick up at all — I can read and type them comfortably now without too much latency — and I'm 62.5% through the intro course that LingoDeer claims to be N5-equivalent. Picking up enough kanji for this to become a useful skill does seem a bit daunting, but as others have said, rote memorization is only a matter of time and consistency.