Learn the kana before anything else
Japanese uses two phonetic scripts, hiragana and katakana, and learning both is the fastest early win you can get. Together they cover the sounds of the language, so once you know them you can read furigana, sound out words, and stop relying on romaji, which holds most learners back. Most people learn hiragana in a week or two with a little daily practice, then katakana, which is used for loanwords you will recognise from English. You do not need kanji yet. With kana in place, the Japanese you hear in shows starts to connect to something you can read, which makes every later step easier.
Get comprehensible input from anime and TV
Once you have the kana and a few hundred common words, start watching. Choose slower, dialogue-driven shows before fast action or heavy slang: slice-of-life series and gentle dramas are far easier than shounen battle anime. Use graded subtitles so the difficulty stays understandable, swapping only a few words at a time rather than reading full translations. The goal is to follow the story while your ear absorbs natural pronunciation, rhythm, and high-frequency words in context. Pick shows you genuinely enjoy, because the hours you actually watch matter more than picking the theoretically perfect title.
Build kanji and vocabulary from what you watch
Kanji feels intimidating, but you do not need to grind thousands in isolation. Learn the most common kanji and the words they appear in, and let the shows you watch decide what to prioritise: the words you keep hearing are the words worth saving. Focus on recognising whole words rather than memorising readings in a vacuum, since the same kanji can be read several ways. This way your kanji study is tied to language you have actually met, which makes it stick and keeps it relevant instead of abstract.
Review with spaced repetition and be patient
Save the words you meet while watching and review them on a spaced-repetition schedule so they move into long-term memory. This single habit is what turns hours of watching into real progress. Be realistic about the timeline: the US Foreign Service Institute rates Japanese among the hardest languages for English speakers, at roughly 2200 hours to professional proficiency, far more than Spanish or Indonesian. The good news is that enjoyable input you sustain for years beats intense study you quit in months, which is exactly why learning from shows you love is such a strong strategy for Japanese.