I've gone through a lot of material over the years to learn languages. It's a bit of a hobby and I've found something that I actually like. So I'm here to give you a top 2 of my favorites when it comes to learning Japanese.
My #1 favorite is Pimsleur Japanese. Everyone's probably heard this one and it's a classic learning tool. For Japanese I preferred Pimsleur over any other audio lessons. When I was studying Mandarin for example I went with Michel Thomas. They did an awesome job with tones. Libraries usually stock up on Pimsleur so if you want to give it a try you can try looking there first.
And my #2 favorite being YesJapan. If you were a member once but left because it seemed a little hard and unorganized you might try taking another look now. The website is nice and clean and I found everything to be very helpful. If you've never been to YesJapan before let me give you a brief run through.
-Dictionaries
-Flashcards
-Variety of matching games
-Grammar notes
-Cultural notes
-Phrases with audio files
-Vocabulary lists
-Tons of lessons
-Hiragana/Katakana Lessons
The best feature I like about this is you can choose how much hiragana/katakana you know so you can learn the lessons according to your knowledge. There's also videos on there. They're kinda goofy and you have to pay extra for them. Personally I was fine with the just the lessons, but whatever floats your boat. There's a ton of stuff so if you want to take a look there's a tour. www.YesJapan.com
There was a teacher online 2 years ago that actually taught you Japanese through IM/skype chat. He'd give you a lesson and you'd work through it and do the homework and email it to him and he'd email it back with corrections or talk to you personally if you had questions. He charged 40 dollars for 40 lessons but his one-one service was awesome. I wanted to put him in my top 3, but alas, I couldn't find him again.
Hope these helped you get started. I know they've helped me a heck of a lot. Studying by yourself can be hard. Just keep at it and don't give up.