I'd love to be able to take an intensive course but it's not in the cards right now. Nowhere around me here on the US offers it from whhat I know, and I don't have enough money saved to be able to afford something like that unless I was guaranteed a job while still in Japan. 
The little rituals actually aren't that intimidating to me. I took an interview at LINE Corp last year and was planning on going to the Boston Career Forum last November so I studied a lot of training videos aimed at Japanese people and mimicked them. I'd need to jog my memory again at this point but I had it pretty solid I think. Probably not perfect, but definitely passable. I feel like I can mimic pretty well if I see it in action a few times, so those prep videos on Youtube are a lifesaver. I definitely need to study more though, like I had never heard of the 他社訪問 thing.
The set phrases are what I'm worried about most now. I've been trying to internalize all of the 尊敬語 and 謙譲語 forms of words that I can. I've also been using one of the books my tutor gave me with a bunch of standard conversation templates. I spent a good hour or two after I woke up until I had to leave for school repeating the same conversation as clearly as I could at full speed without tripping myself up. Repeated it a little bit in the car as well.
If I manage to get a job in Japan then I wouldn't mind taking classes for my own sake to fill in the gaps, though.
Edit: I should also point out just so it's clear: the interview at LINE was done over Skype and I never went to tge career forum last year. So my studying ended up not being all that useful
The little rituals actually aren't that intimidating to me. I took an interview at LINE Corp last year and was planning on going to the Boston Career Forum last November so I studied a lot of training videos aimed at Japanese people and mimicked them. I'd need to jog my memory again at this point but I had it pretty solid I think. Probably not perfect, but definitely passable. I feel like I can mimic pretty well if I see it in action a few times, so those prep videos on Youtube are a lifesaver. I definitely need to study more though, like I had never heard of the 他社訪問 thing.
The set phrases are what I'm worried about most now. I've been trying to internalize all of the 尊敬語 and 謙譲語 forms of words that I can. I've also been using one of the books my tutor gave me with a bunch of standard conversation templates. I spent a good hour or two after I woke up until I had to leave for school repeating the same conversation as clearly as I could at full speed without tripping myself up. Repeated it a little bit in the car as well.
If I manage to get a job in Japan then I wouldn't mind taking classes for my own sake to fill in the gaps, though.
Edit: I should also point out just so it's clear: the interview at LINE was done over Skype and I never went to tge career forum last year. So my studying ended up not being all that useful
Edited: 2016-02-02, 12:31 pm