I appreciate all the suggestions guys. I get it. I need to change my perspective. I decided to learn Japanese because I went there earlier this year for the first time to visit a friend that was doing some missionary work. Fell in love with the country in a way I never thought would happen and made some friends. They speak English but I don’t want to talk to them in English. I want to speak their language and experience their culture. I plan on moving there next year at least for a short period of time and my dream one day is to stay and be fluent in Japanese. I ain’t giving up.
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That’s the spirit! 
Remember, just like with everything, there will be good times and bad times. Times when would manage to understand a whole text easily and it would feel like you’re pretty much there – and times when you wouldn’g be able to understand a text at all and it would feel like this is impossible. But as long as you kee moving regardless – you will get there! 
We are all rooting for you! 
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For improving your listening, I highly recommend Comprehensible Japanese ! Try sorting by “easy” and see how much you understand from the first videos that pop up, you’ll slowly start to understand more and more and the images/gestures/facial expressions from the teachers help you learn new words in context. They also have transcripts so you can improve your reading while listening along to the audio. It’s helped me so much, I have 112 hours now watching the videos on the platform and after about 50 hours, I was able to add Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners podcast for more regular listening practice. Good luck with the listening, what’s worked for me is starting with extremely easy content and slowly ramping it up!
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Right on que today I was watching the first episode of Death Note with JP subs and I was able to understand a line from Ryuk without thinking lol 
. OK I’ll STFU stop complaining and keep going.
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You’ve already gotten really good advice, and it looks like you’ve got a really good reason to learn and you’re motivated and putting in the work. I’m at about the same point as you in terms of time (I started learning in March), and I’ll echo what everyone else said - at ~six months, we’re still very much beginners and it’s sometimes hard to feel the progress from day to day or even week to week. But it’s there and it’s real. 
I think the important thing is to try to find what works for you and do that, keeping in mind your goal and your particular learning style and ability to invest time, etc. I’m certain if you continue to put in the work you’ll reach your goal in due time!
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When in a stump, I am pretty much like KJules said, plan and reassess every 3 months.
Keep the plan long enough to make it work well, but there are also plans that don’t work so well, taking not only time, but also opportunity costs.
6-month or 1-year should be more deliberate and careful. Shorter ones, not so much.
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I use JP101. My recommendation is to step away from the core words and go do an Audio Level path instead. Stay away from video content there (until you get to like Level 4, but that’s a while away). Staying away from video content will force you to focus on listening, and reading the transcript.
Literally start on Level 1. Then do Level 2.
I will also recommend this (significantly easier on computer, only needs to be done for a new lesson):
- Get Anki
- Make a deck if you haven’t already
- When you complete a new lesson, add a link to the lesson in Anki as a new card
Now you can review dialogs you’ve done (don’t relisten to the whole podcast, just click the dialog button). Grade yourself on how well you think you did but don’t pick an interval < 1 day.
You can also make an Anki deck for the vocab…
OR parse the transcript through JPDB in a custom deck when you do a lesson for the first time. Read the parsed list as you listen to the dialog and remove anything JPDB got wrong.
This way you can review things without using JapanesePod101’s non-SRS flashcards…
My listening skills used to lag way behind but the above has really helped me!
(I used to do the JPDB method for the flashcards for a while so I know it works pretty well. Nowadays I painstakingly moved all my JP101-related flashcards to MaruMori because of the grammar SRS, so as not to have two review sites)
PS: if you want I can export my Anki decks for the deck of links. Just have to start at level 1 and press the links. Works great on mobile too.
Looks like this:
Literally each card is a link to the lesson , opens it up in your browser (on mobile can disable the setting to open links externally, to load the page within the Anki app and not make your phone browser full of tabs to close)
Recommend using FSRS and turning off any tap controls that grade the card as mis-tapping on the link can lead to accidentally grading the card (mobile)
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Anyone boasting fluency in months can be safely ignored. If you pay attention, the thing you’ll notice about these people is that they rarely prove it.
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I wrote flashcards on anki to try to recall the jfz vocab and even then I will sometimes forget it.
There are a lot of liars on the internet. Very few people can actually learn a language like Japanese that quickly. There’s a guy out there with like 100 claimed learned languages and it’s just goofy.
I think we’re around the same position. Though I do see some growth when watching anime. In short sentences I can understand. But still missing a lot of vocab something like 5,000 words.
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You just have to keep moving forward. Everybody learns at different speeds, depends on a lot of variables, so you can’t really compare.
That said, anytime I hear about somebody learning Japanese in months as opposed to years, after myself having spent hours a day over the past year+ to learn 1000 kanji, I’m very skeptical.
If one’s definition of “fluency” is being able to speak basic sentences about very common things and situations… sure, a few weeks should be enough. But the second somebody asks you a real question the facade will collapse…
I agree with the plateau, work, sudden improvement description. For example you might find yourself watching an anime, only to realize you “forgot” to turn the subtitles on, when somebody uses a word you don’t know. Or when speaking English, I think of the Japanese word first, without meaning to.
It’s a marathon. Keep moving forward and you’ll get there. Practice whatever you think is helping the most. Anything you do is helping. That progress is often unclear.
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Just like lots of others have already said: it’s a long journey, and especially at the start it might feel that you’re making no progress, but don’t give up! Everything you do is a step towards your goal
As for listening I just wanted to add that I find the channel Nihongo-Learning with Yuta very useful - slow talking, variety of topics and pictures to help, it also has pre-made Japanese subtitles (at least for the beginner ones)
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I’m trying all sorts of stuff to add a listening strand. One thing which synchs with WK is using the WK Self-Study Quiz script: audio to meaning. I find that with standard WK I am very reliant on the kanji. The direction I’ve learned up until now is deliberately focused on reading, so kanji to meaning and usually kanji to reading. I very rarely think in reading to meaning or meaning to reading, but for listening and speaking, that’s what you need. So, although there are lots of problems with homophones, I’m doing single word audio to meaning, level by level, up to level 10 WK, which is roughly where I am in WK.
I can’t say it works yet and the skill will help me pull more words out of say watching/listening to anime, but I’m hopeful. I think single word wouldn’t be the best practice for speaking, where I’d ideally want sentences, but I think it’ll prove a useful enough bolt-on to current WK for listening practice.
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This is soo true.
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That sounds like a good idea, I also have that problem that if I hear a word without the kanji it’s harder to think of the meaning, but also vise versa. Especially when a word is made of two kanji and I forget which way around they are
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I keep confusing 空港 (airport) and 航空 (aviation) when I hear them 
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I forgot to mention this earlier but forgetting is part of the learning process. Things that you need will stick better to your memory if they have somewhere to latch onto, so don’t stress out too much. You will obtain and naturally accrete the words over time if you do your studies and its almost like a canyon getting carved out by water. I’m even at the stage where I’m considering abandoning the flash card grind and toughing it out with graded readers only. If my goal is to read…why not practice reading?
I’ve only been studying since January, and being able to read the reading segments on each chapter of this Japanese from zero textbook with Kanji being an aid, not a stumbling block is incredible. I’m on JFZ book 4 chapter 9. I have some Japanese books and Manga that I am excited to get to read one day. Its one of the hardest languages out there so don’t stress out, just keep swimming.
The way I make my cards is I write out the word in Hiragana and then next to it write the Kanji for it. That way the Kanji helps recall the meaning, so eventually just the Kanji alone will activate the meaning. Then the English translation is on the other side.
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I’m reading the advanced stories in Satori reader and I’m using Japanese subtitles, and I still don’t feel like I’ve learned anything, so I would say this is a typical feeling.
The people around me (who aren’t learning Japanese) tell me otherwise, and I know logically, I am making progress. But it doesn’t feel like I am. I’ve learned to keep charging forward with blind faith that hard work will yield results.
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Speaking from my own experience, having been on/off for years. It feels like I know nothing, partly because I don’t feel confident speaking and doing recall. But honestly truly, the fact 9 years ago I barely understood any kanji that wasn’t 1-10. Now while I’m nowhere near what I wish I would be, I know more now.
I still feel like I’m floundering, a lot. But Even then I feel stronger, and as weird as it sounds, being able to read basic kindergarten level readers is a good reminder that I’ve grown. I wish I could read manga and cool stuff, but…I can read something. It’s progress even If I feel like I’m so far from my goal.
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