High-five for being beginners! :P We’ve not been studying long so it’s not really surprising that we’re both at a beginner stage; no one would expect us to be experts already. Just gotta keep going, making a little progress at a time and we’ll get to intermediate stage soon enough :) Koichi plans to be finished Season 6 by the end of the year (Pfft! As if :P) – should be the end of beginnerhood and on to intermediatedom; a good mid-term goal, to be beyond newbieville by the end of the year ;)
Y’know, as much as I can’t understand 1% of native material yet, I am noticing gradually more words here and there, which is nice. Listened to a Perfume song today that I’ve heard 9001 times already and heard 「諦める」（あきらめる）[give up] which is one of my Ultimate Verbs – I wasn’t actively listening, I just heard it randomly and it put a smile on my face when I recognised it :) I’m getting to studying native material one word at a time ;)
The damned (but beautiful) writing system is really what’s been slowing us down – any other language and we’d be pro by now ;)