One thing nice about this language log is that I don't think anyone from my sharehouse knows about its existence and even if they did, the chances of them reading it are slim to none. Reading English is a challenge so the quantity of posts will overwhelm them fast.
So I can talk a bit freely here about the people I meet if I want to I think. I'm in an international sharehouse in the Tokyo area. It's in Tokyo but people that come out to visit seem surprised. It's 40 minutes away from Shinjuku by express train so we're not talking walking distance by any means. Anyway, in an international sharehouse you get a lot of types of Japanese living here. It's advertised as a great way to learn English because you can speak to the foreigners etc. There's definitely a lot of professionals who see that and decide to live here for that reason, although they often don't speak much English before they move in, and you really can't learn a language just making small talk to people so they generally don't get much better unless they study super hard and only a couple do. And then you get people who may want to learn English but more than that they want a foreign girlfriend/boyfriend.
So currently there's a couple of girls in the latter category in the sharehouse. Well probably more than that. But two are really obvious about it. One is a twenty one year old 'show dance girl' from ropungi, an area in Tokyo notorious for having nightclubs where Japanese girls go to pick up foreign guys. She posted some pictures of on the house facebook of her at work and her outfits are really <ahem> nice XD.
Another girl is the older sister of a guy who used to live here. He's was a super diligent student who graduated and I think has some sort of IT job in Vietnam or something now. I kind of figured but the western girls in the sharehouse confirmed it for me, he's really good looking. His sister is nice looking too and tall for a Japanese. She's kind of his opposite though in terms of personality. Smokes, drinks, didn't go to college, and doesn't seem so responsible. At least that was my impression when I talked to her at a party and found out that she has a Japanese boyfriend but she was so obviously trying to pick up western guys. She was just visiting then but she moved into the sharehouse this fall and I've gotten to know her since. She's a super nice friendly outgoing person. What gets me is that she seems quite ethical in general and yet she clearly doesn't see anything wrong with cheating on her boyfriend... this kind of blows my mind. If I hooked up with her, and then her boyfriend came to visit (he lives in their hometown which is about 4 hours away), I think I would feel way more guilty than she would.
Anyway, I haven't made much progress getting a Japanese girlfriend. I don't know how much it would really help my Japanese to be honest. They say it's a great way but I think you have to live with the person. I'm seeing a girl I met through Tinder (it's more of a dating app than a hookup app in Japan I think) but it's more like we're just friends I think. Text messages and seeing someone once every two weeks helps your language a little but it's not huge. She's nice in that although she want to learn English and maybe even get a job as a translator she's happy speaking Japanese or English. There's no what language do we speak fight going on like I get with a lot of Japanese people who are studying English. It can get awkward. I think I hurt one girls feelings in the sharehouse without meaning to. She was upset and thought her English was horrible because I looked disappointed every time she spoke English to me instead of Japanese. That made me feel bad because I know she tries so hard to learn English and she's a super thoughtful, generous person.
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. You can adjust the settings to make it harder but I see what you mean that Japanese doesn't feel hard enough. It's ok but while it said it's testing 10,000, it seems like it's testing everything in that range so that you're getting a mix of stupid easy and stuff more to your level. And I don't know where they're getting their sentences. If it's from the same resource that is public domain and used by all the dictionary apps, it's not really edited and I wonder if some of those sentences were written by Google Translate. That said, if I'm doing a language where I'm less advanced, and I'm pretty casual about my studying (not studying for JLPT for sure) then that site looks like a good time sink.