You don’t say much about your future of going to college, but depending on when and where that is it might be a great solution for you as well. If you’re going to college in the US/Canada this fall, then I would jus take Japanese from level 1 once you’re there. It’ll be slow in the beginning as you’ll already know hiragana and a lot of kanji/words, but that’ll just make it easier for you to focus on the grammar and content that will literally be spoon fed to you. College language classes are designed to get you to a study abroad level by your junior year, you won’t have to worry about choosing which resources to use or how to pace yourself, and the time to study and learn Japanese will be by definition baked into your schedule. And you’ll have a grade depending on it, so you will have an external motivation to study all things non vocab+kanji. College classes, unlike online resources, are comprehensive, and include grammar, vocab, listening and speaking practice. And if you’re already in college, they’re part of your 12-15 credits you’d be taking anyway and don’t cost any extra. So that’s something to consider.
Without grammar it becomes really difficult indeed to understand sentences
that’s why since level 22 I started checking gramar, so far n5 to n2 and it is helping a lot to understand the nhk easy articles, later I will start manga, I hope I can also understand the dialogues way better without checking dicitionary frequently.
just like many kanji have many meanings, same happens to n3 and n2 grammar, lmao
Is bunpo better than bunpro?
Completely agree!
Well tbf OP has made it pretty clear he doesn’t want to/can’t get himself to do this.
I definitely agree with this. Having spent hours on sheer exposure (still doesn’t irk me as much as “immersion” 
) by watching anime throughout the years I can say it’s not a very efficient method if one doesn’t have the core grammar structures and loads of vocab nailed down.
The reason I think it works for children is because they start from zero or close to that and don’t yet have an established view on a lot of concepts, not to mention a main language. So they just absorb and “machine learn” their way to a degree of fluency.
@sittingmilk I’m afraid you need to take a step back, as @seanblue suggested, cut down on WaniKani time and focus that time on grammar.
You mentioned you spent 1-2 hours/day doing WaniKani. Can you break down that time into blocks or is it more like “doing WaniKani while sitting on a train” kind of time?
If you can break it down, you can for instance stop doing lessons on WaniKani and focus only on reviews, and spend that time watching Cure Dolls videos, reading Tae Kim’s Guide to Grammar, doing Genki or similar activities.
The issue I see is that your kanji knowledge has outstripped your overall proficiency so the sooner you focus on grammar (and possibly some useful vocabulary), the sooner you can get back on track and will stop forgetting the kanji you’ve already Burned.
Because reading grammar is booooring! 
I think that’s exaggerating a bit how long it will take to notice patterns and grammar. If you can find proper level material you can notice basic things pretty quickly. At the start you need a simple medium with a lot of visual guides. You can’t just listen to native material from zero, of course.
I did a test recently starting from zero Spanish and learning with a channel called Dreaming Spanish, that has videos for absolute beginners. Even after a few hours of listening I could start to understand basic particles and structures. Granted, Spanish is a lot easier compared to Japanese but it only adds some multiplier to the process.
As an added bonus, it feels like I’m getting a better grasp of the pronunciation, as I’m learning ‘by ear’ right from the get go.
Besides, it’s so much more fun to discover the language yourself! I believe those initial connections will be much stronger having realized a lot of the things on your own. Of course, even Kaufmann recommends you skim some basic grammar guides, but not really fixating on them and coming back later. Grammar does give you a clutch to start understanding more, but I don’t think you have to be even intermediate to start learning like this and it being relatively “efficient”. You don’t actually have to understand the grammar completely if you understand the sentence, and still make progress.
But yeah it’s pretty overwhelming to not understand much and keep listening; the teacher is really important. It’s probably not for everyone, but I found it a neat experience how powerful the brain can be.
Just to make sure I’m understanding correctly, are you talking about anime with English subs? Or no subs/japanese subs?
Yeah I’ve been recently kinda coming to the same realization that I’ve been using wk as a crutch and the longer I go without doing something about it the harder its gonna be so today when I woke up without really giving myself time to think about what I was doing instead of doing my usual 15-20 lessons I just did 7 and am gonna try to stick to that. I also went back to bunpro and started back at that and am gonna try to do my best to stick with this as well as use other resources people suggested. I will try to keep you all updated with how this goes thank you all for the help!
I also recently bought a Japanese copy of volume 1 of Steel Ball Run as a sort of long term goal for myself (and I really like SBR and the cover as well) and I’m hoping seeing that will give me motivation to try to keep with my grammar so I can get to a point where I can actually understand the content.
Ι tried both with English subs and without any subs. After turning off the subs I noticed I can pick up single words or short phrases, but not enough to understand the full context of conversations. It got significantly better this year after I finished Genki and got onto Tobira so already having learned basic grammar structures. I started properly learning Japanese in the second half of last year. Before that it was rather dabbling - very little kanji, a bit of kana and only basic verb conjugations.
sadly this is not immersion. target language+ subtitles of your native language usually won’t help in acquiring a new language… unless it’s a few words. The best result is watching it in target language+ target language subtitles.
3 core groups-
- English sound+ Spanish subtitles= 0 improvements in hearing tests after 2 months
- English sound+ no subtitles= 7% improvement in hearing tests.
- English sound+ English subtitles= 30% improvement ( hearing+ vocab)
which is why I think passive listening is pretty much pointless for a beginner because without a sufficient vocab base you won’t even notice/learn new words most of the time. Pure listening is usually only used to solidify an already existing base.
Hybrid approach: Start reading it today[1]. Spend as much time as you need on page one. Look up any unknown grammar. Find the grammar on Bunpro, read the resources, and do lessons specifically on that grammar from your reading[2].
[1] Well, maybe not today. I recommend spending the first two or three weeks watching one video per day from Cure Dolly’s “Japanese From Scratch” playlist on YouTube.
[2] It may be better not to do a lesson on grammar you encounter in reading until you see it two or three times in reading. That way you know it’s something you’re more likely to see again.
I’m not familiar with Steel Ball Run, so I have no idea what its difficulty it. But I started with reading a whole volume of a four-koma manga with no furigana (pre-starting WaniKani!)! Granted, it took me at least six months to get through it, looking up everything. Joining WaniKani’s book clubs has been a much better experience for learning grammar along the way.
honestly, it sounds like you are afraid to leave cozy wanikani nest- sadly no matter what your base is- it will always be hard to start your first immersion. In the end, I dont think anybody had a dream before learning Japanese to do daily 300+ anki/wanikani reviews/ drill textbooks nonstop until the end of their life.
Any grammar is just words that connect sentences - they can be learned in context. The textbook in this case should serve more as an encyclopedia reference material- like if suddenly you cannot understand the meaning of the sentence, even though you know all the words.
I heavily suggest installing yomichan( pref) or rekaikun and try to look at context sentences during wanikani reviews- they show what actually every particle does/ same with conjugations.
Apart from immersion with rik and yomichan as a solid starting point I can only recommend- cury doly Chanel ( 93 lessons course) or tokiniandy chanel where he goes through both Genki books ( 1 lesson 40-50 min) in videos by focusing purely in grammar with explanations. Very good course when you know all kanjis and vocabulary.
This seems like a good approach and I will definitely try this. I did start trying to watch Japanese Ammo with Misa’s grammar for absolute beginners a while back but that was right before I got my job and then I just got busy and ended up forgetting but now that I’ve gotten into a good rhythm with work I hope I’ll be able to start watching Cure Dolly’s videos daily from now on. As for the difficulty of SBR I don’t have a clue but I don’t assume its gonna easy especially cause its jojo (i wouldn’t assume it would be easy anyway I expect it to be a hellish experience but hey I’m here for it)
After my prior post, I did look up a 試し読み for it, and it certainly looks difficult. I considered possibly editing my post to mention that it may be better to start with something easier.
I’d say you can go either way, depending on whether you want to make super slow progress through the material on something more difficult, or pick something easier where you can make faster progress on the material. Regardless, you’ll be learning a lot of the same grammar.
I’ve consumed all the versions of Battle Royale I could possibly get my hands on and understand. The translated book and manga and the movies
I’ve been following the Absolute Beginners Book Club and even some of those books are challenging for me, so I couldn’t even imagine tackling Battle Royale in the original Japanese.
I have a long way to go…
Some day for sure you will 
I’ve got a long way to go too. We can do it!
Kauffman and Krashen both say the input has to be comprehensible. I have seen YouTube channels that have native Japanese content along with Japanese text AND English translation on the screen at the same time. This makes the content comprehensible.
Find somehing that is very intersting to you and listen and read repeatedly. Slow down the speed if necessary at first. Read and listen simultaneously many times. Then only listen to it a number of times…while doing chores, taking a walk, etc. Find another video and repeat. Mix them up. Read and listen repeatedly. The brain has great power to recognize patterns i.e., grammar structures! Common words and expressions will recur frequently.
Here is a recommendation (challenge?)…
Resolve to make this a daily habit for 30 days. Then glance at some grammar explanations (books and/or videos).
I have seen YouTube channels (such as Easy Japanese or Easy Spanish) that have native spoken content along with the native text AND the English translation on the screen at the same time. Each of your 3 core groups had only 2 of these. Using all 3 simultaneously makes the content comprehensible. You can read and listen simultaneously over and over with deepening understanding each time.
I have seen YouTube channels (such as Easy Japanese or Easy Spanish) that have native spoken content along with the native text AND the English translation on the screen at the same time. Using all 3 simultaneously makes the content comprehensible. You can read and listen simultaneously over and over with deepening understanding each time.