Everyone! Quick! Listen to Me!

Actually I’ve been studying Japanese for about 5 years before discovering immersion, and I was still borderline illiterate after 2 years of pretty much nothing but 24/7 AJATT. Generally speaking I am still not very good: I mean, since I never read — mostly because I can’t — you can probably imagine the size of my vocabulary, right? I can sure understand scripted, heavily annunciated instances of Japanese thought! Mostly anime, watching which is literally all I have done with my teens and 20s. For any actual real Japanese I understand enough to get the general message, and then I just ignore everything I don’t understand: works most of the time. Never lived to Japan, of course, and to be honest — not a huge fan. Not anime enough. It’s not like I could function outside of this basement, anyway.