Remembering how I learned hirigana, you might laugh, but all those borring days in physic classes? I had a hirigana chart printed out and I just started copying them, covering the characters up and trying to do it myself. Over and over.. Also, it sucks and you do your work really really slow, but when you are doing your Japanese homework (or making written sentences) just be sure to practice writing. Your hand will hurt and probably your brain, but thats an easy way to get it done. Otherwise, a smart phone app (there are lots of them) have kanji/kana charts you can practice writing or tracing over the characters on the screen.

www.memrise.com Is a great place, you can heavily expand your vocab too.

There's lots of ways to get started. My focus is on speaking - just using romaji to spell it out. I always start a new language with the Lonely Planet Phrasebook. http://amzn.com/1742201865 I can build short conversations about introducing myself and asking for things right away. About the time I started getting curious about the symbols, I picked up a couple of books. You can learn to sound out Hiragana in 2 weeks (1 hour a day) with this book - I use the Kindle version and I'm half-way through after 1 week: "Japanese from Zero! 1: Proven Techniques to Learn Japanese" http://amzn.com/B00QHFL72M Make sure you have a good flashcard app, like Anki - http://ankisrs.net I've also learned about 60 Kanji in a week using this book - also a Kindle download: "Read Japanese Today: The Easy Way to Learn 400 Practical Kanji" http://amzn.com/B00Q3FLLAO I take a spiral approach - start learning the sounds from Lonely Planet, then learn some hiragana and Kanji from the books, but then link them to the conversations I'm having. So they both build on each other. Good luck! www.MarcusChance.com Updates also at: http://www.fluentin3months.com/forum/my-language-mission/missione-giapponese-japanese-basic-conversations-by-july-31/#p29838

These are my favorite sites to learn Japanese characters. It has stroke orders and pronunciation of each letters. http://www.coscom.co.jp/hiragana-katakana/kana_fstep_hiragana/hiragana01.html http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/syllabary/ I hope you like it. Good luck!

Thank you for all the helpful comments! I will be sure to try out a few suggestions and see which works best for me:)