^ I'd love to become truly proficient at Japanese, but it's so hard to find the time and energy to do it, especially when it has to compete with so many other interests in my limited free time. Progressing beyond what language pedagogy calls the "learning plateau" has been a real challenge.
I got to that plateau pretty quickly, though. I never took any actual classes, but I started working through some textbooks etc. on my own in preparation for my first trip to Japan, and less than a year and a half later I was speaking admittedly simple but grammatically correct Japanese in my dreams.