Discussion While learning japanese - When did you reach the point to read a light novel nicely?

I understand that each person sees this differently, since their learning process is rarely the same and with the same speed, but I still wanna now. When did you reach the point while learning japanese to read a light novel (And web novels) quite nicely (without using a dictionary every two seconds)? This question is just for people who did really learn japanese (by themselves, or in lessons) and sticked to learning this language/aka now maybe translators.

Please don't post stupid comments, like 'never' for example, if you didn't even learn japanese, just to post a comment, or to be funny.

 

depends on how often you read, I know friends that gotten pretty far in japanese within a year (he become International student in Japan now) as for me I'm still learning and struggling

 

My friend learned it during middle school to hs. He spent total 7 years studying japanese. He's qutie fluent in the langauge. He tells me practicing with locals/ using it in daily life is preferable.

 

I've been studying japanese for more than three years now, and I remember being able to read simple stuff three months after I started, but I still struggled with a lot of vocab, after that it was just a matter of how much vocab and kanji I could cram into my head, but after my first year of studying I had way less problems and was able to read a few novels only having to check a dictionary for not so common terms (sciency stuff for example). But then again, I already knew three languages when I started so maybe I already knew how to go around learning new languages by then.

 

Incidentally, I am in Japan now, and honestly that depends on the way you study. I'm 3 months in (2.5 months in my country and now half a month in Japan), around N4 and compared to half a month ago I got far better although technically I'm still struggling a lot.

Now, in half an hour I would probably be able to read around 4 pages. My vocab is half decent (I have to say, watching animes does help me alot in vocabs lol), but I'm still pretty bad at kanji so I often end up in kanji search every 20-30 seconds.