First learn hiragana and katakana.

I'm learning japanese as well I'm taking a program but it's not an easy language by any means. I thought it would go much faster but I'm getting to conversational level and I can read some Kanji. I found the review for the program on http://bit.ly/1cvbAOg.

Like the above poster said, learning kana (hiragana and katakana) is a crucial first step to learning Japanese. Kana can be learned (visually) very easily. Some people said it takes ~ 8 months to be able to read katakana and hiragana like they know the alphabet. Writing kana is much harder than reading (in my opinion) kana. Once you are able to read kana very well, I recommend learning basic grammar and some kanji. Seeing that you are fluent in Chinese, most of the kanji will be familiar, however, most have different meanings and variation. Good luck!