I have been doing homestay for the last 2 months and have found that this exposure has been really useful for me. Not so much because I am suddenly doing a whole lot of speaking, but more so because I am constantly exposed to Japanese. I simply can't switch out of Japanese mode as I need to understand and communicate with those that are around me.

It has also made me aware of a form of Japanese that I have not really been exposed to. That being real Japanese conversations and speech patterns. The problem is that when you watch TV, dramas or anime, all the uming and aring of normal conversation is not there, since it is all so focused on maximising the amount of content being delivered. However, normal people don't talk like this and particulary you, as an imperfect speaker learning the language especially don't talk like this. Even if you can speak very fluently, you sound robotic and cold if you aren't breaking up what you are saying into nice chunks.

EG.

今日ね職場でさ誰かが転んでさ手を骨折したんだって。といってもひどくないらしいけど、なんかね、驚いてなかったよ。床が危ないんだよ。滑らかでねぇ・・・

Anyway, forgive the lame attempt, but you probably get the idea of what I am talking about. The thing is I think this way of speaking (I can't really do it) is the most difficult but those of us doing the immersion thing get the least amount of this kind of input. Plus along with good pron, this is how to sound really Japanese. Much much more so than are huge vocab or mastery of high level grammar. So, try and get more.

I have found http://www.podcastjuice.jp/ to be a great source. Nico nico can also be good.

Podcasts are indeed a good source; I like コーヒーと牛乳 and the 電脳空間カウボーイズ, but any podcast not put together by professional speakers/narrators/announcers or with heavy postproduction should do.

~J

Yeah, real life Japanese is sort of "fumbled" indeed. That's a problem to me, since regular informal Japanese is spoken in generally short sentences with everything dropped because it's already in the context, I've noticed I STILL have trouble speaking long sentences even though I've been with a girl speaking nothing but Japanese with her for 2 years now. It's so easy to get by with short sentences, relying heavily on context. It's not that I can't say longer things or hold a discussion, it's more that it's so easy to fall back on the "fumbleness".