I consider January 2008 as when I "really" started to study Japanese. Before then it was mishmash of Rosetta, Japanese for Busy People, Genki and Pimsleur. Never too far into any of them. July 2007 till January 2008 I consider myself doing and finishing RTK (with 80% in the last stack being my marker for "finished").
Anyway, it's been a year and a slow one at that (in my opinion) for learning Japanese. However:
1. Watched three Japanese dramas fully without English using Japanese subtitles (Last Friends, Last Christmas, Nodame Cantabile) and one without subtitles (GTO). Not saying I had full understanding, but enough to enjoy them. There are other shows I've watched, but not their entire season.
2. Read 12 books so far of 20th Century Boys.
3. Can sing 15 karaoke songs with 90% score or better (got 98% with "明日晴れるかな"). I can even sight read songs at times.
Oddly enough, the above has come about in the last 4 or 5 months. It just seemed something "clicked" and Japanese become a blast to read and watch entirely on its own without supplementary aids (prior knowledge, english subs, etc.)
Now, I consider my progress to be slow. Until the last 4 or 5 months, I've been trying to force myself to do UBJG or KO2001 or Tae Kim's. With a change up of how I learn and review, it's gone MUCH faster so now I'm ~1600 sentences in Anki. (not counting the UBJG and KO2001 sentences that I'm not reviewing anymore).
As I wrote elsewhere about this: the more I learned, the more I enjoyed stuff in Japanese, which encouraged me to learn more stuff. It became a complimentary cycle.
It still all goes back to what Khatzumoto says: Enjoy stuff in Japanese. I think that the sentence method can be more structured than he recommends, but that's just a personality thing. I also think the sentence approach can be done differently for the same reason. Then again, he doesn't preach strict adherence and changes up his approach as time goes on.
