Hey,
I speak Chinese from before, so I can read most of the kanji, but I don't know the pronunciation, I also read hiragana and some katakana.

Do you guys have any tips for learning Japanese, or which books I should go through, I already started to look at Genki 1.

Thanks for the help

Hi Andreas, that's a very big question, so I can only say what worked for me - there will be loads of other possibilities, so I am not sure this will help:

Personally, I like to start any new language with a teacher. Online/Skype etc or in person does not matter, but someone I can talk to and who answers questions and also forces me to speak the new language. Teaching material at that stage is secondary - I rely on the teacher to pick what's best (though I admit I had some bad experiences with that; some teachers are obviously better than others).

As books go, I like the Minna No Nihongo (MNN) series. For any level, you need at least two books (the main text book in Japanese and the Translation and Grammatical Notes one in a language you are comfortable with). If you study without a teacher, I would also recommend the volume with audio samples on CD. I like MNN for the structured approach with lots of pattern drill exercises, as well as a nicely spaced repetition: patterns learned a few lessons ago keep coming up in later exercises almost unnoticed. A downside: they keep furiganizing (transliterating) all kanji indiscriminately throughout books I and II (except for numbers, strangely, which can be tricky, but do not get reading help at all). Good for checking you got the correct reading, but for reading practice, you need other materials. Not sure how other series handle this.

Anyway, good luck! Japanese sure is a fun language to learn :)

I can recommend university courses as their speed seems to fit us skritterers better than other courses. In Germany it's actually quite easy and almost for free to enroll at any age and do language courses. So I did one semester of Japanese and knowing the kanji already was a big plus: reading & writing is going to feel very natural to you.
Speaking was a whole different matter for me and every sentence felt like solving a logical puzzle in my head. That's gonna be the challenge and I would recommend to find a teacher to speak with or a language exchange partner.
My speaking ability and feel for Japanese got much better after being to Japan and living with Japanese friends for a couple of months.

I currently focus on Chinese only, but I think Japanese is a wonderful language with a surprisingly clever grammatical structure.

Zacharias Fisches

Thanks for good answers. Unfortunately I am too busy with my studies already, so I don't have time to attend language classes.

I am now trying to combine rosetta stone and skritter to learn as many words as possible. For the grammar part, I guess I have to find a book for that a little later, then get as much reading practice as I can.
I am not sure if I do it in the "correct" order, but I'll give it a try. Going to Japan must be the best thing to do though.