A brief tangent, but something I've noticed is that the meanings of words like "fluent" and even "native" are so ambiguous and poorly defined, that it is almost

A brief tangent, but something I've noticed is that the meanings of words like "fluent" and even "native" are so ambiguous and poorly defined, that it is almost impossible to have a meaningful conversation about language learning unless you avoid them completely. The marketing materials for language learning resources tend to make full use of this vagueness, like this one does. I wish these resources instead did more to enlighten their prospects as to what one can actually expect to achieve and in what kind of time frames. Languages are endlessly deep. "Native" is not even close to the top. Even amongst "native" speakers, skill with and understanding of language is enormously varied. Compare the wedding toast of a skilled public speaker with that of an average one. Compare a literature scholar's understanding of a classic novel with that of an ordinary high school graduate. It's night and day. IME, 777 kanji wouldn't get you very far in a newspaper and certainly not a novel. It would likely be enough to understand 90% of ordinary emails and text messages. So many great resources to learn Japanese with these days; this vocabulary list is not one of them.