I've been studying for about 6 years now and it's been both rewarding and incredibly frustrating at the same time. It seems to have paid off somewhat, as I was able to read and communicate fairly well in Japan. Once I've moved, I should be able to really sharpen my skills, as being surrounded really helped out. Only within the last 1-1.5 years have I finally been able to start "thinking" in Japanese, rather than doing "mini-translations". I think you must really be interested in the language in order to succeed on your own, though. I find it enjoyable to study and am quite motivated. However, it is very challenging at times, and it can take time before you really grasp certain aspects of it. For me, things would suddenly just "click" at one point and it felt as if a new door had opened.
One thing I have't heard mentioned in this thread is the method proposed and written by James W. Heisig for learning kanji. This is a route that I have recently been traveling, as my kanji knowledge needed work.
Basically, the concept of his method is to make the kanji system work in your native language. He attaches very short stories and ideas to each kanji and builds them up from the basic structures.
A really simple example would be something like...
古
He writes...
old
The primitive elements that compose this character are ten and
mouth, but you may ³nd it easier to remember it as a pictograph
of a tombstone with a cross on top. Just think back to
one of those graveyards you have visited, or better still, used to
play in as a child, with old inscriptions on the tombstones.
This departure from the primitive elements in favor of a pictograph
will take place now and again at these early stages, and
almost never after that. So you need not worry about cluttering
up your memory with too many character drawings. [5]
* Used as a primitive element, this kanji keeps its key-word
sense of old, but care should be taken to make that abstract
notion as graphic as possible.
The order used for learning the kanji along makes it easy to remember them without writing them over and over again (once or twice is enough and only to practice the actual writing aspect).
The downside is that you need to follow the program all the way through. His first book does not actually reveal any Japanese words at all. You have a kanji, keyword, and description in English...but no Japanese. Volume 2, then, starts to teach actual words (as does V3). It seems that he is taking a multiple step approach. Rather than trying to learn a kanji and all of the meanings (and different readings) in one go, this method teaches you the symbol and gives you insight into the symbol. This really helps remove the kanji barrier when you start to learn more words. I already knew about 500 kanji when I started this, but I've followed his directions and looked over every kanji, including those that I already knew. Due to the method in which they are constructed, this is necesary, or his points will not work. This method also fails to cover kanji combinations, I suppose. You won't see words created from multiple kanji.
However, I still find this method to be pretty amazing. I've learned many new kanji and re-learned old ones and, unlike before, I can now WRITE all of them. I dunno, my previous approaches were just so...different and tedious. I can cover like 20-30 new kanji a day even with work. The book is called 'Remembering the Kanji', BTW.
I'm not so certain that this method is suited for a beginner, though...but it's something worth looking at once you have a grip on the language.
