Just had my first cross talk session in Japanese and I wanted to write out an update of how it felt at 1400h of input.
Background: Native Serbian speaker, C2 English (learned through immersion), B2 Spanish (learned through immersion), and I’m now tackling Japanese (immersion + audio only SRS)
Migaku says I know roughly 6600 words, which seems to be a good estimate. I do 5-6h of immersion per day + 30-40 minutes of audio only SRS cards with Migaku that I mine from the content that I watch.
First of all I have to say, if you have the means to do cross-talk, and your level of comprehension is pretty high, do it RIGHT NOW. The boost to your confidence and identity is actually insane, and it just makes the language seem more real if that makes any sense. For the first 1400h, it was just a thing that I saw on my screen, but now it feels like a real world tangible thing that has it’s use outside of just consuming content on YouTube.
I met my Japanese friend though a mutual friend of ours, and the start of the cross-talk session was actually pretty funny. I told her that she can speak at her normal speaking pace and that she doesn’t have to adjust her speech for me, but I guess the rumors are true, Japanese people really love making sure that you are okay and that you understand everything 
She would would speak for a while, and than she would randomly pause to check if I understand what the word 夫 means or something silly like that. This happened every now and again for the first 15 minutes of the call, until she figured out that I pretty much understand everything that she is saying, but after the initial shock the conversation we had was actually pretty fun. We talked for about 80 minutes with her doing most of the talking (like it was legit 80% of her Japanese and 20% of me speaking English), even though it was a long conversation, I only had to stop and ask her to explain the meaning of 3 words to me, which she could do completely in Japanese.
Comprehension felt effortless. I guess you kind of forget how narrow the vocabulary range is in a normal every day conversation when you are always focusing on watching slightly harder content on YouTube in order to expand your vocabulary.
(自身が患っていた珍しい遺伝性疾患の治療法を開発すると - I got hit with this absolute banger a few days ago lol)
I also found that some output came out naturally. For example aizuchi came really naturally, and little follow up questions and reactions. She was talking about how her daughter is extremely introverted and how she doesn’t like approaching people and a ぼくとおなじ just came out naturally as a reaction. While little moments like this were happening all through the call, I definitely wouldn’t call it speaking just yet. I think the most complex sentences that came out were:
- あー これは娘さんの日記ですね
- そんなことあるー？
- 娘さんは何歳ですか？
So yea… still a long way to go on the output side. With more input, more cross-talk sessions and light pressure-free outputting this should improve significantly by the end of this year.
Honestly I’ve been grinding Japanese for the last 8 months, so this really put some wind in my back to push even harder. Connecting with real people was the reason I started learning the language in the first place, and it’s just nice to break the monotony of grinding SRS cards and watching YouTube content for a bit.
Anyways, have fun with Japanese, I can’t wait to write a 2000h update near the end of this year!!