I think people have a skewed idea of what fluency is and what is needed to achieve it. I cannot tell you how many times I heard "oh just live in Japan for a couple years and you will be fluent" or "live in Japan for a couple years and you will be fluent like your cousin." This winter break I finally experienced my cousin speaking Japanese, and nothing against my cousin, but he's not fluent. I could understand all the Japanese he spoke as well as him and his wife talking. Now, it's perfectly possible he knows a lot more Japanese than me, but I suspect his level isn't actually that far above mine. Again, this is nothing against my cousin I think he and his language ability is awesome, but I'd like to use this example to bring attention to a common misconception about language learning and fluency.
Everyone talks about how great immersion is for learning a language. This is true, but not in the way you might expect. For example, I know that cashiers at the grocery store will ask me if I need a bag. Knowing this, I can just reply with "大丈夫”(daijobu, okay) if I don't need one or "お願いします"(onegaishimasu, please) if I do. I've gone through three levels of language in this situation: the immersion, the knowing one word, and the understanding the whole sentence. With immersion, I know from context they are asking me if I need a bag, but I have no idea what the heck they are saying word wise. This happened to me my first time in Japan and I asked my Japanese teacher what they were asking, and she said they were saying "袋はいりますか？"(fukuro wa irimasuka?) or some slight variation thereof. From that point forward, I would listen really hard for the "fu" sound because I knew that was part of the word bag and I could make sure they were asking me about needing a bag and not about if I had a membership card or something else. A year of study later, I found myself in the same grocery store and understanding the words for bag as well as the verb for "to need." In all of these situations, I did the exact same action of reacting to the cashier asking if I need a bag, but only the ones that involved studying really taught me anything. Or at least, it would have taken me a lot longer to learn the words.
The power of immersion isn't magically picking up a language, it's being forced to use 110% of your language ability. Being able to understand a sentence in the textbook is one thing but when the 70 year old smoker school bus driver with the heaviest accent you have ever heard asks you a question, it's an entirely different experience. As for the bus driver example, I heard "英語" and "だるま," which is "English" and the second part of the word for "snowman." Thinking it through, I asked him if he was wondering what "snowman" is in English, and apparently that was right. When it comes to immersion, I think the better way to explain it working is the "use it or lose it" idea. Like I can know that 持ってきました(motte kimashita) means "I brought it," but I have forgotten that many times in the process of learning it in class. Now, if a cashier asks me if I need a bag, I can pull my folding unicorn reusable bag out and tell them "持ってきました" with a smile. This situation will keep happening, so I will keep remembering this word.
Another example happened yesterday, but requires a little bit of explanation: in the teacher's room, we have a big board where all the student's absences are listed. This is usually name and reason, or what time they are coming/going if late/leaving early. Given my free time, I bring Japanese language books to study, mostly my JLPT N4 vocabulary book (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). Something else about me is for some reason I like kanji, which is normally everyone's least favorite part of Japanese. Anyway, combining all this background information, I was looking at the board and took a closer look at the reason one student has been missing for a couple days. The board said 5-10日間入院, which means "5-10 days" and the last two kanji sparked my memory. The first kanji means "enter" and the second kanji is in the word for "hospital," which further sparked my memory that the word "hospitalization" is in my vocab book so I flipped to the "illness" section and sure enough there was 入院(nyuuin), hospitalization. If I hadn't studied Japanese, there's no way I would have been able to deduce what was up with my student because google translate camera doesn't work well on handwriting. Kind of an unfortunate example, but still a good and recent example of immersion only working well if you also study.
Now, despite my struggles, I can live here reasonably. I can grocery shop, send packages, ask for time off at work, ask for help at a front desk because I lost my hat, see a doctor, buy gas or kerosene, pay my rent and car lease, talk to my coworkers about weekend plans, and a variety of other activities required for adult life. I can't do these well, but I can do them. Does being able to do the actions required for my life make me fluent? I don't think so. My vocabulary is still only about 1000-1500 words and I usually only catch about half of what people/announcements say, often less. So I can live fairly comfortably, but I am far from fluency. It's still hard to read the instructions on my soba noodle packages, there's no way I could communicate these blog posts well in Japanese, finding things in the grocery store is from memory more than reading the signs, I've mixed up words trying to pay my car lease, most conversations in the teacher's room and beyond go over my head, and the many other problems that come with having the vocabulary of a kindergartner.
I am not fluent, and I won't be soon. Thankfully, living here gets easier week by week as I translate my book learning into real life. Right now I'm studying JLPT N4 level, which is the second lowest level, with the hope of taking the N3 in July or December (it is only offered twice a year). N2 level Japanese is required to get a job outside the sphere of assistant language teaching, so I have a lot of studying to do.
Here is an example from my studying of flashcards. The green represents cards I have mastered, blue represents getting right a couple times, and yellow represents ones I didn't answer correctly. The green bar represents the over 715 flashcards I have mastered for the N5 level.
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