You always need to start with the basics, that's just how it us. After you got those under control you can go with practicing, practicing a lot. For me that came quite natural as I already attended a lot of Japanese communities. I've to say that practicing with Japanese was way easier than I did with English some years before that. Maybe the level of Japanese is higher spoken under natives than with English natives. But really, you've to find your own way of developing your language skills, nobody will have the same experience and nobody should have the same experience.
I hope my philosophic essay helped ✌