I just wanna pay people to let me watch stuff. 
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How can they complain about piracy if they allow people to pay them to watch what they want?
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I learned to read Hiragana and Katakana in high school but I never did anything with it until I moved to Japan in July of 2016. Between July of 2016 and April of 2017 the only thing I did, in regard to Japanese studies, is sporadically read Tae Kim and take notes. I got through the first part of the grammar guide but it really wasn’t much. I was really frustrated because Tae Kim would have these giant vocabulary lists at the beginning of the lessons and then he wouldn’t put furigana on the kanji in the actual sentences so I was always doubling-back to remember what kanji went with what meaning. I got so frustrated that I realized I really needed to stop and figure out this kanji thing…
Though I think I’m past 30 volumes of manga this year too…
I read The Girl Who Lept Through Time in December of last year and it was the first book in Japanese that I finished. Penguin Highway I started in December but ended up finishing in January. Then I made a New Year’s Resolution to read 10 books in Japanese for the whole year. Then it changed 10 books before the July JLPT, which became 15. Now I’m at 30 as my goal with 24 actually read this year so far.
I’m a big reader in English already, so compared to the 68 books I read last year and the 93 the year before, 30 doesn’t seem that big. People always say to do the things your interested in anyways, just in Japanese. This is actually the most natural thing to do for me and doesn’t require as much motivation, unlike trying to read newspapers…I can somewhat understand them but it’s hard to make it a habit of reading them, when I never do it in English anyways.
Yeah, other than kanji which of course you have a great base in, vocab and grammar are the hardest. In gaming terms, I think of them like daily quests. It’s something you have to learn/review daily, for very small short-term benefits, but as the days go on, you eventually get to a point where you can unlock more and more stuff.
I was in the middle of studying N2 grammar and had already gotten Core 2k under my belt when I decided to try The Girl Who Lept Through Time…which I feel was kind of overkill. I’m amazed at all the Beginner or Absolute Beginner Book Clubs who try to tackle things as soon as possible. That’s something I have to work on myself. Not that I don’t try hard books, Botchan was definitely above my paygrade but it was still a good experience I think.
I only know of those websites that probably sit in a gray area in terms of copyright stuff so I can’t really help you there. I’m in Japan so Japanese Netflix has been a blessing with all it’s content. And also it was the thing that kicked me in the butt to even try to watch anime with only Japanese subtitles, since it doesn’t have many titles with English subtitles. Are Netflix Originals the same across all countries? Because Netflix has anime and I think they would have Japanese subtitles for it, though you maybe have to set Japanese as your language preference.
My recommendation is to start with an anime that you know you will like. Because, regardless of the difficulty, you’re more likely to keep watching it if you actually like it.
I started with Little Witch Academia because I always found the art super charming. I saw it was on JP Netflix and was excited, but then I saw there was no English subtitles and just went “Whelp…guess I’m doing this.” I think in September of last year I watched the first episode, but it was rough. I thought they talked so fast and they had so many magical terms thrown in there. No one would think it would be a good starting recommendation. But I liked it. So even though I knew maybe 30% of what they were saying, I watched the next episode, and the next, and so on. And even though I always hear that you should stay at your level +1 material, I figured that, if I was getting more enjoyment out of watching this anime that I barely understood than watching a wall or paint dry, I must have been understanding something.
But as a vague recommendation, slice-of-life is probably the best because it’s dialogue should be closer to average Japanese than other genres. That’s why recently I’ve been able to watch Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku without any subtitles, because it’s just a mix of daily life talk and otaku terms.
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The Netflix “Original” anime on U.S. Netflix do have Japanese subtitles. It’s just that the selection is really sparse and there’s not really much I’m interested in.
I have trouble getting through that wall, because I want to know what’s happening. When reading I have a bad habit of looking up a lot that I pretty much know or figured out from context, because I want to know more (e.g. nuance, reading). This is even worse with shows simply because my understanding is lower to start, while also being even harder / less practical to look stuff up.
This is what I want to do. Really, I want to start with rewatching several slice of life shows that I enjoyed, but this time with only Japanese subtitles. Unfortunately, the slice of life genre is virtually unrepresented on Netflix in the U.S. Plus I don’t like watching TV on my computer, so I need something that will work reasonably easily on my TV.
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