Japanese is the fourth language for me by count, and the second to learn (at least partially) through formal and other education. The first two were learned "in context" - no textbooks, no vocabulary lists aside from those we're pressured into for the SATs.
If we're not "in context" - in country, surrounded by language, there is no chance for success without a textbook and some sort of guide. The view I've formulated is that you really need at least two sets of textbooks, by different authors, presenting the information from their perspective points of view. A grammar reference appropriate for the level is a must.
With Japanese this gets more complicated than the romance or cyrillic scripts, but my view is that you will need two sets of character study books, plus a good reference.
For some of these the web is a great resource. Going through the online Japanese language resources you will no doubt come accross the names Jim Breen and Tae Kim.
Jim Breen is responsible for the foundation upon which the bulk of online Japanese learning tools are based. Tae Kim is known for what is considered on the of the best online Japanese grammar premieres. It is excellent as a second resource or for those that studied in the past and need a good review.
Whatever your primary texts may be (possibly mandaded by instructors), the main thing that I would recommend is to avoid working with a textbook which is "romaji" based. While Eleanor Jorden's Japanese The Spoken Language is an excellent grammer book and moves fast with dialogues (I've studied from all three volumes), its use of romaji as a crutch made it difficult to get into taking notes in Japanese. This is a great text, but should be a second/supplemental text for this reason.
More on my favorite texts later.
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