[dotnet00]

I'm not too far into learning to speak/read Japanese, but have gotten pretty good at understanding it when spoken from years of only really watching/listening to Japanese media (human pattern matching ability is crazy!). My feeling has been that similar to what others have said, that the popular learning resources seem to make the early grammar seem broader than it is by teaching each sentence 'type' as a separate rule.

Although I haven't put enough thought into the exact differences (and thus might be entirely wrong), I've felt the grammar is fairly intuitive (I presume due in part to my background of also speaking fluent Hindi).

[giuscri]

How did you get exposed to Japanese media? You lived there? Or just anime? You used English subtitles or Japanese ones?

[dotnet00]

Started with friends introducing me to anime in highschool (with english subtitles), which I got hooked on, then got into the music as well, and later into vtubers (so no subtitles when watching live). I haven't ever really been into other entertainment, so for a little over a decade I've been listening to japanese on a near daily basis.

I know it's a meme for people to claim to know japanese from watching anime, which is why I don't claim to be able to speak it, but over time I did pick up enough that I don't need subtitles anymore. I'm slowly working on reading with practice books, wanikani etc, will eventually figure out some way to practice speaking too.