Hey, what's up.

I've been wanting to learn Japanese for a while and visit there one day but it's hard when you don't know anybody who speaks it, and I think that would be the fastest way to learn so I googled and found this forum.

Can anyone direct me to the best place on this forum to start learning the basics/beginners stuff? Bear in mind I'm not worried about learning how to write/read japanese right now i'm more focused on speaking it and understanding it.

Thanks.

Try your local junior colleges. I'm sure there are many in NYC. That would be my first route. As you start to become more skilled in it, look for social meetup groups. You can check out meetup.com for local groups.

IMO, learning to read and write it properly from the beginning is important too. Early in my learning, I focused on the romanization of the language, and I've found that it became detrimental to my ability to visualize the phonetic characters in my mind. I would "see" the romanization in my head instead of the characters themselves.