This last year has been a good one for my progress in learning Japanese. I quit my job in late 2009, and then went travelling around some pacific-rim countries for the first three months of this year. Coming back to Japan in April, I started at a Japanese language school, and have now been there for around nine months. Naturally, my Japanese has improved hugely since then. In particular, a lot has come together in the last six weeks or so.
First I've just started being able to read novels without having to painstakingly work my way through with a dictionary and a grammar guide. (Albeit, only those novels with straight-forward language, for example I am currently reading a murder mystery called 桜の下殺人事件 by 西村京太廊.) Second, I finally feel like I can have a conversation in Japanese. Not fluidly or very expressively, but I do now have the confidence that I can tell stories, make points, ask questions, and so on; a huge step forward for me.
To sum that up with some 'metrics': I've completed all three of the みんなの日本語 books (初級 volumes 1 and 2, and 中級 volume 1); I've just sat the JLPT N3 exam and feel there's a fair chance I passed; and I estimate my vocabulary to be around 3000 words. Listening is hard to measure, but I'd say that I've probably put in a minimum of about 1000 hours of useful listening (over two years, not just last year), and considerably more if I include background listening. I completed Heisig about two years ago, and have been living in Japan for two years.
In 2011 I expect to continue at language school for at least another 6 months, which gives me a good opportunity to continue to improve. My goals for the year are as follows.
First, to sit and pass the JLPT N2. There are two chances, so that should be achievable!
Second, to increase my vocabulary to about 8000 words, which means adding another 5000 to my vocab deck this year. That works out to be about 14 a day, though I plan to front-load most of that in the first six months at a rate of about 25 a day.
Third, to improve my conversational ability so that I can converse fairly fluidly, even if my language is unnatural at times and I have to talk around vocab I don't know, and not including detailed technical discussions, just everyday conversations. Probably around another 300 hours or so of conversation practice required, in all.
Fourth, to improve my listening so that I can understand and follow television programs (of medium difficulty) without too much trouble, though I don't have to catch every little nuance or detail. I estimate another 500 hours or so of useful listening should do the trick (1.5 hours per day).
And fifth, to improve my reading so that I can pick up any (adult, general ability) novel, non-fiction book, or magazine and be able to follow and understand the story without resorting to a dictionary. That means probably skipping over a word I don't know every 3 sentences or so, and doesn't include writing with highly technical and specialised vocabulary. I also want to be able to read some (simple) newspaper articles.
My god, there's still a huge mountain to climb!
I should keep some logs or something, of the time I spend...
Good luck to everyone in 2011, and let's see where we all are in a year's time!
My aim is to catch up with my RTK reviews, which I let pile up after I added over 150 a day for a few days and then got bored. 
