/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I feel like I've just about entered the intermediate stage.
I know enough Japanese that I only need to look stuff up once in a while, and any non-rare grammar point is intuitively understood without having to think about it, but I still read so slowly that a lot of things get boring before I can get thru them, and reading doesn't feel all that natural yet.
On one hand, I know that at this point, the only thing I need to do (or can do at all) is to just read more, like, shittons more, but on the other hand that's also really demotivating because I just have to force myself to immerse until I absorb the language on a more fundamental/instinctual level...
Hopefully by the time I get there, I won't have ran out of decent stuff to read quite yet.

It's kind of cruel that reading is the only real way to improve my understanding, and yet, because my understanding isn't high enough, reading is extremely slow and kinda boring.
I guess this is why most people will never manage to learn a second language properly; this barrier right here.