List of favorite media.

• Star Wars (III - VI)
• The Matrix series
• Dune book series

There is an overabundance of information on how to learn Japanese. After spending too much time consuming it all, a combination of immersion + Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) works the best for me:

• The most important benefit here is a measurable goal. Reaching a vocabulary of 10,000 words means conversational fluency (you'd know 99% of most common words)
• To remember 10,000 words use SRS software like Anki
• To find 10,0000 most common words for your use case immerse and "mine" those words into your SRS deck using Yomitan
• Immersion means consuming content in native language (books, series, movies). Immersion is crucial for language acquisition (actually learning the language) instead of rote memorization. You can technically learn a language just by immersing, but an SRS speeds up the process and gives you a measurable goal (not to be underestimated).
• To learn fundamental grammar use these weird Cure Dolly Lessons (YouTube, though I prefer the transcript)
• For more info on why this seems to be the best way, read this