For noobs one and all!!!

[NekoGnash]

Ok you probably have tens of people asking each other every day the same stupid question - "What's the best method for learning this cursed language!?"
Fluent is probably YEARS ahead of my time but for the time being is there any bit of advice/books etc anyone can recommend me start experimenting??

Say for instance [no pun intended please ^_^] I wanted a Vague *is hit* understanding of Tales of Rebirth - not so much dialogue but being able to comprehend the many text boxes/menus and the like [video games are the WORST for learning arent they? *lol*]  Still...some helpful "getting started" advice would be awsome.

[Kogahazan]

Speaking of vague... I'll assume you're talking about learning Japanese.

Anyway, the easiest way to learn is to take advantage of your school if they have a Japanese language program.

Edit: After reading the post below, bungiefan brings up a good point: You need to practice with other people in a variety of situations. That's where the classroom comes in, which is another reason why taking a Japanese course at school is the easiest way.

Otherwise, try out any books you can and see which one works for you. There are free alternatives, but you can only learn so much from freebies. If you don't really aim to be fluent but still want some level of comprehension, the least you can do is learn katakana. If you don't know what that is, look up a little more about Japanese language. Katakana is used mostly for foreign words, mostly English when it comes to games especially Tales. So if you understand katakana, you'll be able to pick out a lot of English, so menus will be mostly easy to navigate. You'll eventually figure out which menu option does what.

Anyway, after you learn katakana, learn hiragana if you have any effort left. Katakana is significantly easier to learn, hiragana is a bit more difficult but you should learn if you keep at it. Then try looking up commonly used kanji. It may do you some good to learn to write all these if you were planning otherwise. Writing them burns them into your mind faster.

Absolute minimum hiragana you should know:
はい = yes
いいえ = no

http://aselia.cjb.net/
Cyllya's site above has some good advice on learning Japanese. Enter the site and click Japanese on the sidebar. She has charts for katakana, hiragana, and a bit of common kanji used in RPGs such as elements, towns, etc. I myself got started with learning Japanese by going through Cyllya's kana charts, then started taking Japanese at school.

For Tales of Rebirth specifically, Spekio's translation guide below does almost exactly what you're asking. It translates the text boxes throughout the game, most likely just the main story and not much sidequests so you're out of luck there.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/game/920236.htm

[bungiefan]

Also, for slightly less than the cost of one semester of Japanese at the local university, I was able to get Levels I and II of The Rosetta Stone for Japanese. It looks like it would work really well if I could consistently dedicate the time every day or so to use it. You still need people to use your skills with the language with in a variety of situations, instead of just going over the exercises in a book or course repeatedly though, meaning you need to find people to speak and write Japanese with, which has been the hardest step for me.

[Phren]

Kogahazan is right about writing them being much easier to learn if you write (draw?) them.
http://www.geocities.com/takasugishinji/japanese/index.html
This is an older site, but it has many useful tools. Not the lease of which are java applets that show you how to draw the kana: the shape and order of the lines.
The best way is to find a romanised passage (japanese in english letters, like : 'Watashi wo rikou desu' kind of stuff) and manualy write it kana using a chart and an applet. It's tedious, but as you stop having to look at the chart and applet for every one it will start to take hold much faster then most methods I've tried.

Also, for simple word learning, a program called 'linkword' is great for beginners to learn some basics, though it's fairly limited. I kind of found it on the internet by accident years ago, so I can't tell you where to get it.