General Info:

The Japanese writing mainly consists out of three parts. First of all the two kana alphabets for simpler writing, hiragana & katakana. And then the chinese writing Kanji.
There are a lot of ways to write romanized Japanese (rômaji), but the most popular way is the so-called Hepburn romanization system, because it reflects the japanese pronunciation best.

The Japanese language has an extremely extensive vocabulary. It consists mainly of three parts:

* Traditional Japanese
* Sino-Japanese (originated from Chinese)
* Foreign words, mainly western
(i'm assuming by this they meant katakana)

Introductory Lesson:

Read This site for some introductory knowledge

The written form of Hiragana -- It's a little different from the printed form, study this table for how to write hiragana correctly.

Mairi's Hiragana Chart -- A small but useful chart.

Mairi's Katakana Chart. -- A small but useful chart.

The Japanese Page ~ A basic free site that allows its users to take lessons, also it has a good tactic for learning Kanji for those that have trouble remembering them (short term memory problems).

Japanese-Online ~ Another free Japanese Learning site.

Learn-Japanese ~ Another Japanese learning site.

Kantango ~ free site devoted to teaching Japanese vocabulary.

Japanese Language ~ Japanese learning site.

Nihongo Web ~ NihongoWeb provides copyright free/safe downloadable materials for Japanese language teachers.
This site also offers information about Japanese language teaching in general.

Web Japanese ~ Site for Japanese learners.

Jishuu-Shitsu ~Self-Study Japanese.

Kanji-Game ~ Games on Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana.

WebCMJ ~Grammar/Sentence structure references.

Conjugating Japanese ~Tables for Conjugating Japanese Verbs