I've studied Japanese for about a year and most of my resources are free and online. I've never had a teacher either. There are many study groups were people practice what they learned together. If you have trouble or don't know what to do next, you can message me and I'll try to help, I'm sure there are many people willing to help.
First, you should learn the hiragana and katakana alphabets. Then, get started on grammar and kanji right away. One thing I like about Japanese, whenever I learn just a few kanji, I learn so many new words. The best advice I can give is: be patient, you will need to know a lot of characters before you can say you got the basics down.