If you are going this year forget a college course unless it is purely conversational.
Forget Rosetta Stone too as six months of that and all you will be able to say is stuff like "the boy is under the bench" and the dumbass CD has to run the whole time so your laptop batteries will take a beating.
I would go with Pimsleur. Strictly conversational and no reading (at least initially)
They even start right off early on with stuff like "suppose you are sitting next to a Japanese woman on the train and want to begin a conversation"
