Hi everyone! It’s my first post here, so I’m really sorry if I’ve posted in the wrong category or anything like that! I’m currently on level 33, and while I’m okay with memorising kanji and vocabulary, it’s only really once it’s there in front of me that I recall the meaning. I’m struggling to recall much of the vocabulary without the kanji in front of me, so I find conversations and writing very difficult. Does anyone else have this problem? If so, does anyone have any advice on how to traverse it? I understand that actually speaking and practising it that way would help, but I don’t have anyone I can do that with, and I’m extremely shy to regularly practice in a community or group. Ideally, I’d love a language buddy I can commit to learning with who shares my interests, so we can be friends alongside learning and practising together. I’ve tried some apps, but I end up just getting messages from guys trying to be my boyfriend, and other conversations don’t last long .
Is there any advice out there? I’d be so grateful, as I’ve really dedicated myself to making it this far on WaniKani, and I’d love to reach level 60 whilst also being able to properly integrate my learning in communication! (Side note, does anyone also have any advice on how to read hiragana quicker? No matter how much I read, I still read it so slowly even after all this time!) 
First off: yes learning to write and speak is harder than learning to read and listen. It’s the difference between active and passive knowledge/vocabulary. That part never goes away completely.
I’d say start by doing writing practice. You are lucky in that you don’t even need a Japanese person anymore for it to be pretty effective. Try writing some sentences about your day or any of your interests, while using dictionaries or grammar guides whenever you feel like you want to express something and you can’t. Then post your written text into some LLM and let it tell you unnatural parts. Don’t take everything at face value, but it can be really valuable to get at least some feedback. Even if it is not perfect, the small inaccuracies you can fix later when you actually are able to connect with Japanese natives.
If you do that for a solid month I think you will already see big improvements in how fast and confident you can form standard simple sentences with て-form as an example.
Learning to speak is another step up from forming simple sentence in writing. It is harder to do alone, and honestly the whole point is to communicate with someone. Therefore, I don’t think you will get around finding someone to speak with.
Things you could do for that:
- Find classes (community college or similar?) that you can join → forces you to write for homework as well
- Get some online tutor → can personalize everything but is a little on the expensive side
- Get a Primsleur course → in some countries possible via libraries
- Try shadowing → helps you to get used to saying common phrases and your mouth moving
- Try to speak to yourslef in Japanese at home and describe what you are doing for example → remember things you couldn’t express and look them up after
- Keep on grinding on some exchange apps until you maybe find someone you hit it off with
- Plan a stay (vacation or language school) in Japan
Good look on your journey
PS.: I totally forgot, for speaking a pre-requisite is that you actually understand what the speaking partner is saying. So make sure you have a solid listening foundation as well.
I take classes through Languatalk ( Zoom Japanese classes for adults & kids | Try it for free ) and have had the same tutor for about 2.5 years now. Reiko is very good, and her rates are not that expensive. I go through a textbook as self-study, and we do conversation plus reading/correcting my homework. My husband is Japanese (though I don’t necessarily recommend that as the best way to learn Japanese ), 
), but I actually think I learn more in class because teachers and partners correct you in completely different ways. It’s also motivating because you need to complete independent study between classes.
Other people recommend I talki. I have not used it, though.
I try to watch about 10 minutes or more of YouTube in Japanese daily, often news programs like TBS News Dig. It’s helpful for listening.
Good luck!
would you be willing to elaborate a little bit on what sorts of interests you want to share with someone? there’s so many good reasons to be learning this language 
For learning to read hiragana quicker, the best way for me was just practicing reading. You’ve probably heard of it, but just in case you haven’t I would recommend trying Satori reader. If reading doesn’t really feel like it’s helping, maybe practicing writing out simple words in hiragana could help? Whenever I’m in boring meetings at work I practice my Japanese handwriting and its helped me to be able to actively recall the shapes when they’re not in front of me (which I used to find crazy hard).
Like downtimes recommended above, I also sometimes practice talking to myself in Japanese, like I used to practice self-introductions, talking about simple stuff like hobbies, ordering stuff from shops etc.