Have any of you tried making a habit of recording your own Japanese? For example, every day do a video or audio log about a given topic? Perhaps read an article then try to summarize and discuss it. I'd be interested to know if this is something I can leverage when it's difficult to find Japanese people to speak with on a regular basis.

I would be too ashamed of how shitty it sounds and instead read some book...

Sounds like a very helpful idea, especially for pronunciation purposes. I reckon there are quite a few people on YouTube doing something similar. By Vlogging in Japanese, you accomplish the same thing but you also send it out into the world. If you ask nicely, you might even get people to respond and help make corrections.

However, you'd have to be willing to put yourself out there to do that. As z1bbo said, it's easy to feel shame about doing something like that. But as a language teacher myself, I promise you that step one in mastering a language is getting over the fear of speaking it. No one judges you more than you judge yourself (well, on the internet that might not be true... but it holds in real life). Speaking is very important.

Never recorded myself cuz I know how I sound when I read Japanese. Its quite bad actually xD I'm very soft spoken and hesitate a lot which the complete opposite if what I actually am lol

Maybe I should implement this but I think I would be more comfortable if someone who can coach me will listen. I don't want to get in the habit of saying things incorrectly.

That sounds like an excellent idea although I haven't tried it myself.

Here's another thread about recording oneself speaking Japanese:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=12368

I did it for a while when I wanted to get through a lot of JLPT materials and just didn't want to be bothered with Anki. I recorded a lesson a day for a few chapters, basically taught it to myself. They say teaching things actually solidifies knowledge so I tried to do it on myself. I had some pretty good success and did a spaced out review of the material where the recordings were actually getting shorter and shorter because the material was getting easier. I would record a lesson and then listen to it a few days later for review. Then I would delete that recording and just record the lesson again when the time came (usually a week or more later, not traditional SRS style as that would have been too impossible). I would listen while I was walking or exercising.

It was pretty helpful in several ways, I thought. For one, I would get the review of the material and often times notice something about the grammar or vocab that I hadn't while doing the recording. And secondly, you notice your own nuances in Japanese. It's something fairly easy to pick up if you've listened to a ton of Japanese.