How to study Japanese?

I'll try to keep this short.

I want to start learning Japanese, but since I don't have Pimsleur money I need a method to hit it.  Right now I have 'A Guide to Writing Kanji And Kana' Book 1 and 2, by Wolfgang Hadamitzky and Mark Spahn, and Living Language's 'Ultimate Japanese' (which is supposedly a VERY shitty book, but it was free and I'm using it for grammar/conjugation only.)  I'm debating making flash cards as well.

So, how should I go about learning it?  I'm sure just reading it won't be enough...

>>56
Actually, it makes perfect sense.  It's not polite language, and it's slightly slangy, but I think any Japanese person would feel that it's natural speech.

>>55
You're right... Being polite and using polite speech is easy no matter what language you speak, but Japanese and English go about it in different ways.  In English, it's all about which words you use and how you say them.  In Japanese, it's about using special forms of regular verbs.  The difficulty isn't in being polite; it is in learning how to select the correct verb form to create the polite speech.  While it's not hard (as you said), it's just a difference that takes a little bit of getting used to.