I try and study every day. At the very least I get some flash cards going for some vocab rote-learning.
One thing I notice by comparison, is how largely inflated, redundant and complicated the English language can be. But at the same time, how this affords the ability to express yourself in many ways.
One example word which highlights what I mean is the word "Taikai" 大会. This literally means "Big meet". The Japanese use this for everything from a school sports carnival, to a concert, to a convention, festival. All the same word.
But what happens if you want to specifically indicate that it is a convention or a festival for something. You end up requiring a bunch of words to support it. "You know, the big meet with the stage up the front some musicians and the crowd often dancing or listening".
This kind of communication is I think what makes Japanese quite difficult for foreigners too. You can't just learn a vocabulary and exchange it, you have to use a set-phrase of speech which gets the same message across.
On the flip side of the coin, is that if you have one word like 'Daijoubu" or "It's OK" that gets used everwhere and for everything, you can simply express your 'OKness' with something. You don't need to explain why. If a salesman comes trying to sell you a book you already own, in English you'd say "No thanks, I already own one." Just saying "No thanks" is possibly even a bit blunt. But in Japanese all you gotta do is state the "I'm ok" and thats that.
I remember one of the Japanese bilinguals I met during my travels and he said as he was gaining fluency in English there became times when he found it really easy to express himself in English. The vocabulary offers ways to say things that are impossible in Japanese. But at the same time there were moments where Japanese was better to express yourself. With less vocabulary required you can simply state your feeling and nothing more is necessary, providing a bit of freedom with having to give specifics or correctly articulating yourself.
Almost 7 months here learning the language and I'm still thoroughly enjoying it. While it may have a simpler vocabulary, and often simple grammatical structures, the combination of components that are required to form a more complicated thought are often completely unique in structure compared to English. There is only more to learn.
