How to improve my Japanese?

Any idea how to improve my command of the Japanese language?

It's ironic that being an English teacher, I can think of ideas & ways to help my students improve their English, yet I can't apply it to myself. Is it the age thing? Or is it just me not being good at languages? Maybe it's a combination of both? Coz i dislike memorizing & have short-term memory, and learning a language means having to remember lots of vocab. Arrghhh!!

Recently my frd signed up for private tuition to learn Japanese. At a fee of S$50/hr, I really don't bear to spend that kind of money now after spending a bomb learning Japanese in Japan! But if i forget what I've learnt, I'll be wasting the time, money & effort spent in Japan...

So I decided to do some self-revision. Using this year's JLPT as a goal, I started to revise thru my old textbook & notes. I intend to take the exam again this year despite telling myself (after the last JLPT in 2004) that I'll never want to go thru another round of the proficiency test. It's meaningless to me even if I pass but can't hold a conversation of the same level.

However I really hope I can improve my Japanese. Most pp say my bf can help me with it, but the truth is, he usually doesn't correct me. Likewise I don't really correct his English. If we both correct each other, our conversations will end up like some language exchange session.

I understand about 70% of what he says but that's probably because he uses simpler vocab & speaks slower for my sake. But when I answer him, it all comes out in a big mess grammetically wrong with wrong choice of vocab. Most often or not I end up speaking "Japlish" (a mix of Japanese & English) in order to get my message across quickly w/o having to rack my brains on the proper grammer & words. It has become a bad habit of mine. So while I can write reasonably well, I can't speak as well, and that really troubles me.

I've watched Japanese dramas & animes & read Japanese manga. No improvement. I write emails/letters in Japanese. Still no improvement. Should I sign up for some Jap conversation class? Haiz... maybe i should just grab my Japanese colleagues to practice everyday....