Check bookclubs in this community, they have one for absolute beginners:
I will be reading the next book in ABBC starting February 1st. There is a discussion thread where you can ask your questions, and more experienced users kindly provide answers.
For now use jisho.org. If the word contains a kanji you don’t know, look the kanji up by part or by drawing it.
Just a word of caution, if you’ll complete all lessons on WK as soon as they will become available, you’ll set up super fast progress that will require huge time commitment later. I quit doing this around lvl 5, limiting myself to 11-14 new lessons per day. I’m paying to this now, when bunch of the first level items come for enlightened reviews, my daily review numbers are in 200 range, which is more that I’d like to have.
Great, thanks for the book club recommendation, will have a closer look on that!
And also thanks for your word of caution. So you would suggest to limit my lessons already? Actually, at the moment I have plenty of time, but as soon as I have a daily working routine again, I will naturally have to limit my WK reviews and new lessons to once or twice per day. Also I already can see how “speedy” WaniKani is. When I have the feeling, I can’t remember anything more, I stop doing my lessons already until I think I my brain is “empty enough” to get some new input. You’d say that this is enough of “caution”?
Oh my god, this is awesome!! 
Thank you so much!!
Of course everyone’s goals, time available and general learning abilities are different. I cannot say for yourself. You can adjust your speed as needed. There is bunch of topics discussing slow-down/speed up strategies (one need to use userscripts for latter).
Common things people say:
*it’s good to compete all reviews each day
*try to honor the first and second SRS intervals for memory reinforcement (review in 4 hours, and later in 8 hours)
*if you need to take a break, vacation mode will save you a headache later
*the most difficult thing in general is to return after big break, so try not to go on such a break. My personal take is slow and steady.
Here is a good guide, but it’s one from very speedy user, so check other Level 60 topics to have fuller picture:
Great recommendations, ありがとうございます！
Will try to follow!
Oh, and I just ordered my book for joining the Book Club! 
A quick search of meetup.com brought up this and others:
https://www.meetup.com/tokyospontaneous/
Read things on the web, where you can look them up very easily.
Here is NHK News Web Easy. It’s simplified versions of real news articles. You can have it add kana to all the kanji. You can have it read out loud to you, a bit slowly. It’s free.
You can use Rikaichan extension in Chrome. It will put definitions and readings on all the japanese words on the page.
In plain old Safari on the Mac, you can easily look up words in dictionaries. Just enable the Japanese dictionaries, and you are good to go.
Shivers up and down my spine!
Have a nice trip! I use HelloTalk for language partners. Normally language partners are not encouraged for serious learners, but I’ve met many natives on here who I befriended and met during my trip.
morteasd is right, your routine severely neglects listening. It’s what people have the most trouble with at JLPTs, especially if you learn Kanji on WK. Kanji will not be your problem.
Besides podcasts, you can watch shows. But be careful not to just follow English subtitles passively, you won’t learn a lot that way. (i think if done with a lot of attention you can still learn a lot, but i’m probably in the minority)
Most people recommend regular listening to native material without subtitles or with japanese subtitles.
If you have Netflix, the language learning with netflix extension is really nice, you’ll see the transcript with japanese subtitles (and english on hover), and you can replay each line as much as you want.
ayaya removing reply
Thanks for the recommendations, bolaurent, OceanLeKitty and Saimin! Installed the extensions already. 
Ok, I will definitely work on my listening skills. Maybe I have to stick to some topics that I like - cooking classes would definitely be my favorite, but I will also give the NHK News Web Easy a chance. (And I just found this 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2FBDFFOr5A)
What about JapanesePod 101? I just checked the “German” version of this service - and it was really poor with many mistakes and strange content, so I can’t judge if the Japanese version is better?
Cheers,
enanu 
Yeah, it is one of the most present moments when I think back of my time in Japan… 
I highly recommend Nihongo con Teppei. You can find his podcast links here: https://www.patreon.com/nihongoconteppei
He has a beginner one and a more advanced one.
I attribute a huge amount of my progress to him and he always cheers me up and motivates 
Thank you, I just started listening to it - wow, that is different to everything I know. So there is no transcript or so?
I’m going to strongly disagree with you on that statement. I don’t know whether KaniWani is the best tool for it, but in my experience practicing English->Japanese is important if you are trying to talk to other people. I eat dinner at a small sushi restaurant every week and the couple who own it don’t speak any English. The regularly try to talk with me and I am able to understand some of what they say. However, when I try to form a reply I have a lot more trouble coming up with the Japanese words even though I know that I have learned them. That inspired me to start doing KaniWani and Torii and I did notice an improvement in my ability to be able to remember the Japanese words when I am trying to mentally translate my answer from English to Japanese. I am pretty convinced that the improvement was because I actually practiced translating from English to Japanese.
Oh my goodness… I’ve just done a search, found it, installed it, tried it out, and it is wonderful! Thank you!
I listened to that when I first started Japanese and hated it. Other people might like it, for me it was awful. Lots, and lots of chat in English, with a host who thought he was funny but most definitely was not. It was pretty painful to listen to most of the time. But, then again, I also hate textbooks and that’s what JP101 is basically. But, like I say, other people seem to like it.
that