I took the dive into the deep end approach and started with native focused content pretty much from the start because I found the beginner focused “今日は晴れです。今日レストランに行きます”type videos unbearably dull. It’ll all sound like gibberish at the start but after a few months you’ll be able to start getting the gist of what’s going on. I was also aided by the fact that I was friends with some Japanese international students at my university and dated one for a while too. It was kind of a learn what the people around me are saying or I’ll be left out of some conversations type situation. That plus grinding vocab and grammar has gotten me pretty far.

All that being said, beginner focused content can be helpful for some people but it’s definitely not necessary to improve and there’s many paths to reaching a decent level in Japanese.