Well, I'm capable of reading raws with a heavy dependency on a dictionary, but if you read a word and have to look it up often enough, you start learning it off by heart without boring yourself.
Anyways, based on my experience and those moments that I've facepalmed because I realized that I should've known something earlier, here's a basic outline (in other words, an optional recommendation) of how to learn japanese (if you plan to learn vocab from raws and cannot attend a formal japanese tutorial).
1.
Start by learning how to read phonetically, learn
hiragana and katakana and make sure to memorize them.
Hiragana is by far, more useful for reading japanese, so I recommend learning it first.
Useful resource(s):
RealKana, repetitive writing, and whatever other "study" techniques you find work best
2.
Read up on basic grammar and make sure you know the
basic particles は, か, と, に. Also read up on the
numbers, and learn to count to 20. Don't pressure yourself with dates, as they are not as important as knowing how to read in the first place.
The particles roughly translate into "about [prior object]", "?", "and/but", and "around [prior time or location]". Please note that these are the conjunctions in english that I have found to work most often in what japanese I have read. I have found that the particles are easiest to remember if you
associate them with an english conjunction that is used in a similar way.
Useful resource(s): "Japanese in Mangaland" by Marc Bernabe and it's workbooks if you can find it
3. Once you understand the basics of grammar and a few particles,
STUDY CONJUGATIONS!
I've lost track of how many times I've facepalmed myself for not knowing a conjugation. These also happen to be very important for accurate translations, as these can mean the difference between saying "I didn't mean it that way," or "I meant what I said."
4. Now that you know enough to pick apart basic sentences, and hopefully have collected a small vocabulary along the way, you may
start increasing your vocabulary and perfecting your grammar by going through a raw scan with a good dictionary.
Make an effort to start recognizing kanji if you want to have a hope of reading more mature manga or having a conversation in spoken japanese.
Useful resource(s):
Practice, Repetitive Writing, Mnemonics,
Wakan, an offline dictionary with many useful features. Also, feel free to use any resources that you have found, as
you may not learn the same way as I do.
I hope that this outline can help you learn without making the mistakes I have.
P.S.
Also, make sure to find time for basic japanese greetings, such as "お早う御座います"(ohayou gozaimasu), into your learning, as they are as customary in japan as "Good morning" is in English. When you start to read a raw to learn the vocabulary, it is a great idea to start learning numbers and dates more in depth right around that time.
Please understand that I'm not telling you to neglect anything, I am just offering a good way to focus your learning so that you learn a little bit of everything. The reasoning behind learning a bit of everything is so that you learn the most useful and important information, the foundation, before you start to learn the information that is used rarely. By doing this, it ensures that you can read a sentence, and if you don't know a word or kanji, it is easy to look it up or pick up on it's usage as you go along, rather than knowing the word, but puzzling over the rest of the sentence.
I can read a manga chapter in 5 minutes but it could take me 5 times that amount of time to translate that same chapter.
