Most particles seem to be postpositions but I'm sure I've seen say a noun followed by a location particle followed by "wa" or "ga" or possibly "wo" but when I've tried to use it I've only confused my Japanese friends.
Under what circumstances can multiple particles end up next to each other and what's the most that could end up in sequence?
Answer
Japanese has many particles (助詞), and they behave in many varying and different ways, so it's helpful to categorize them before we can see how they can be combined. The semi-traditional classification you'd find in Japanese dictionary usually goes along these lines (note that many particles can fall into more than one of these categories as they have different uses, e.g. から can be used to indicate direction, but also as a conjunction indicating reason):
格助詞 Grammatical role particles
These particles usually follow a noun phrase, and indicate its grammatical role in the sentence or in relation to other phrases. This category include particles such as が (subject marker), を (direct object marker), の (both the nominalizer and the genitive relation marker) and markers of location/direction/time such as で、に、へ、から (in the meaning of from) and まで. It also includes と in the meaning of "with" or when used as a quotative particle.並立助詞 Connective particles
These particles usually connect two noun phrases. This obviously includes と (when used as an "and") and や, but also か in the meaning of "or".係助詞 Linking particles (I prefer the name Information structure particles)
These particles are perhaps the hardest to describe. They indicate some link to contextual information, and usually put different kinds of emphasis on whatever they mark. The best way to describe them, in my opinion, is using information structure theory, but it's too complex and irrelevant to include here. This category includes は, も、さえ and こそ.終助詞 Sentence-final particles
These are the hard-to-translate particles we all know and love. They may come only in the end of the sentence, and they usually indicate pragmatic attitudes (such as "This is a question" or "I'm asserting this") or emotions. This category include the question marker か、よ、ね、ぞ、かな, etc. Note that さ、よ and ね are also part of the next category:間投助詞 Interjectional particles
These particles are very similar to the sentence-final particles, but they may also appear in the middle of the sentence, usually in the end of a complete phrase. ね、さ、よ (when used as a vocative) are included here: 「私はね、…」「私ってさ、…」「わが友よ、行け！」 (the last one is quite archaic and probably jocular :)).副助詞 Adverbial particles
These particles are usually defined as "particles that act on the whatever they follow as if you've put an adverb describing it". I think this definition kinda sucks, and this category ends up being quite a mixed bag, usually including such particles as: だけ、くらい、など、ばかり and ほど.接続助詞 Conjunctive particles
These particles are equivalent to conjunctions in English: they connect whatever they follow (which is usually a full clause ending with a verb) to the main sentence. This category includes particles such as から、けど、ので、のに、as well as が when it's used in the meaning of "but".
This classification system of particles is probably far from being perfect, and you can make many variations of it or even reform it completely - but it goes to show you that Japanese particles are extremely varied and perform many different jobs, so laying out how they may be combined is extremely complex.
Using this categorization system, you can say that linking particles may generally follow grammatical role particle when they indicate a role in a sentence (this doesn't include the genitive の), but が and を has a strange property: when you add most linking particles to them, they disappear and are replaced entirely by は、も or whatever linking particle you've added, and you can no longer differentiate between subjects and direct objects. The only exception to this rule I can think of right now is こそ, which actually comes before the grammatical role particle and not after it.
Sentence-final particles obviously can't follow grammatical role particles or linking particles, since particles of these classes only come after the parts of the sentence that appear before the verb, while sentence particles only follow verbs. They usually intermingle only with other sentence-final particles (or with interjection particles that double as sentence-final such as さ and ね).
Connective particles also don't mix very well, since they usually come in the middle of a list of nouns, where no other article (even an interjection particle) can be placed. They also don't tend to mix with each other.
Other classes of particles don't tell us a lot. The interjection particle ね can generally follow almost any other particle, and really is very flexible, while the vocative よ usually follows only nouns or names. I think さ is somewhere in the middle.
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