i would say i am at pretty decent level of understanding japanese atm, been at it for almost 3 years. can't speak for shit really as i haven't really tried since no need to but at some point i will. ringo learned a lot before me and he helped me a lot(still does lol)
for anyone who wants like in depth help with how to go about learning can hit me up on discord kev#9214 but the short version is
learning kana(hiragana+katakana) from either writing it a bunch or using an online drill tool(https://realkana.com/), the latter is easier and preferred since you don't need to write if u don't live in japan. do this for around a week or shorter, you want to be sure on about 70-80% of them you'll fill in the rest when you start the next step which is...
grammar. there's a bunch of choices for this but i would rec either reading tae kim(http://guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar) or japanese the manga way. there's also textbooks like genki if you want something more hands-on. while u do this you should also..
do a pre-made vocab deck using anki or if u wanna spend money, wanikani. https://anacreondjt.gitlab.io/docs/coredeck/ core2k is the most popular free one but it really doesn't matter do w/e. this part is debatable but you're gonna want to prepare yourself to consume native material and learning some words before will make this easier. i don't reccommend trying to learn kanji divorced from words, people have done it before and had success but it's really a placebo at the end of the day, just learn words this will actually help you get in the game faster. last step is..
read/watch/listen japanese. you're gonna suck for a long time, don't stress. there are easy options like news articles for elementary school students, kid anime, manga with furigana(doesn't guarantee ease), visual novels with a texthooker, light text video games but it's really that just simple, the more time you spend in actually trying to comprehend japanese the better you'll get.
and that's basically it, learning a language is a life long journey no one has ever fully conquered a language even natives so just take it easy and enjoy the ride.