Since there are Chinese words in Japanese I'll throw an "educated" guess in there...
1) Vocabulary first/focus (In Chinese, when you can get the basic core 3000 words, you can basically read a newspaper)
No one can blindly memorize single words though, so preferably get a book with pictures to the word(s) in the form of basic dialogue and in that book have a "new words" section where you can then write out these words 10 times each. Do this daily, and also read your book daily too for a couple hours, out loud (that which you know, of course, and preferably with a friend/tutor).
Immersing is important, what could work is find a dedicated tutor (could find a free one in the form of a language exchange via craigslist) and other forms of human immersion; I wouldn't be watching Japanese news, listening to Japanese music or doing anything else other than what that tutor recommends (hopefully you get a good one). The reason being is that it's better for these kinds of languages to at least understand basic grammar first so you don't get mixed up with slang, different area tonations, words spoken improperly etc.
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