I just put on a Hello Project interview; I was watching and following the conversation for a good few minutes until I realized there weren't any subtitles. I got so excited at what I was doing that my heart started pounding and I started to miss everything else they were saying--it took a couple of minutes to get back into the conversation, haha!
I may not understand every word and I definitely don't get most of the jokes, but WOW has my Japanese improved over the past year. When I was taking language acquisition classes in university we were taught that you eventually plateau for learning a language, especially as an adult, but I don't think that's always necessarily true. I've been teaching myself Japanese since I was 13, and I still get better & better at it.
Both times I had cancer I had a huge boost in my Japanese while I was stuck with nothing to do except watch Youtube & Netflix all day. The silver lining to being stuck with nothing to do. I guess as long as you're able to use your time "wisely", for lack of a better word (and I know that's not always possible, obviously), good things can definitely happen.
