[chryuop]

Hi. I was born and raised in Italy. When I was 30 (7 years ago) I moved to USA, different culture and different language.
I started studying English 10ish years before I moved, just coz I liked the language. I took English in high school and went to private classes. After years, still when I went to class and we had to watch news in English I would still understand like 1/20th of what was said. I might get what was 1 piece of news about, sometimes I would get it all wrong and sometimes I would get nothing. That was after years of study.
From someone who lives in a foreign country, let me tell you this: television and telephone conversations will always be one of the worst enemies. Your brain will get stuck on a word you don't know and miss all the rest coming up. Forget television for now. If you really want to get used to the Japanese people way of speaking use music (and have the script in front of you).

The best way to learn words is not listening to television, but reading. You can't imagine how many books in English I have (all from before I moved to USA). The first books I read are full or translations written on top of almost every words, then when you know many words you don't translate anymore, but you learn to understand the meaning of a word from the sense of the rest of the phrase. Now you can understand people speaking in a TV show or movie.

What you should do (and I can't find them, I wish I could) is buy books written even in kanji, but with furigana and read alot. Read and work very hard to understand the meaning of every phrase. This is the beginning of a long trip...sorry no short cuts.