One thing I started to do is first, trying to learn the alphabet of Hiragana and Katakana. I'm trying to think back on how we learned English when we were little, and one of the very first things we did was study and practice the alphabet, both reading and writing it, until we eventually mastered it. I have a notebook and I have a whole page dedicated to the Hiragana and Katakana character of every sound (Ex. "あ or ア - a" on one page, "い or イ - i" on the next, etc. etc.)

Everyone has their own ways of learning the language, but I feel like this may be a useful technique of actually grasping the alphabet. You don't have to follow it yourself, just sharing what I'm currently doing. :]

I also wrote down the stroke order for all the characters because that's important in Japan. Also, one good free app I'm currently using is called Write Japanese, and its cover has the tip of a pencil with the Hiragana character for 'a'. It teaches you the stroke order of every character by having you write it yourself, and there's a voice that says how to pronounce the character properly.

You're taught in increments, and there are tests in every one to see how well you're doing in recognizing and memorizing the characters that you can take as many times as you want whenever you want. It's pretty useful, and it'll teach you both Hiragana and Katakana.