/jp/ - Otaku Culture

If you're learning kanji, I suggest you try JRPG.
http://taw.chaosforge.org/jrpg/
It starts out with kana, then moves on to kanji.
It's a nice way to kill time and study.

I'm considering learning japanese and I have a couple of questions:
How much time would it to be able to read?
is it better to learn with a teacher or internet courses are good enough?
For those who learned this way, was it easy? and how long did it take?
For those who gave up, what's the reason?
Where should I start: Kana->kanji->sentence's meanings and grammar or the other way around?
Which are the best website to start learning?
Which is better to practice reading: Visual novels, light novels, manga or jRPGs?

tl;dr: I want to learn japanese. Good idea or bad idea?