I've been studying Japanese for about a year now, mostly reading manga and watching tv dramas and anime. I've started to notice that some materials help me a lot, like stories about everyday life or stories focused on character development, and some materials don't help me very much, like anime focused mainly on fighting or something like that (they don't talk very much and they always say the same things over and over).

I have the next two months completely free, so I thought I would study 8 hours a day. But I don't want to waste time. What kinds of things should I watch/read? In the long term, if all my listening practice is from anime and dramas, is the input i'm getting going to be broad enough? Or do I need to try other things, like news, or variety programs, or something else?

Thank you! (this is my first attempt at learning a language!)

I think Doraemon （a relatively old Japanese anime) is nice, not so difficult but they don't say things over and over. And all episodes are really funny.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-780882...

I have ever watched "nihonjin no shiranai nihongo" (=the Japanese language Japanese people don't know), which I find interesting for all Japanese language learners.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQn23l8N-yo

Oh, sorry, I forgot to answer your questions.

Question1. In the long term, if all my listening practice is from anime and dramas, is the input i'm getting going to be broad enough?

Answer 1.
As for me, when watching TV dramas, movies or others, I review the grammar points or the new words I already learned in textbooks. If I encounter the words in different contexts, I will learn how to use them. The more I see them, the more active they will be.

Question 2.
Or do I need to try other things, like news, or variety programs, or something else?

Answer 2.
Yes, if you find your favorite ones in different kinds of programs, you will be able to broaden your vocabulary

Tampopo a movie around food - quite funny.

The first scene in Kagemusha is a long speech - interesting for learning language.

On the contrary Kurosawa Dream will not teach you a lot of language - there are very few words spoken in this one.

Edited.

I wouldn't worry so much about whether or not your input is broad enough. I think the best way to determine if something is worth reading/listening to is to ask yourself if you would read/listen to it if it were in your native language. If the answer is yes, then go ahead and use it. If the answer is no, do you really care about the vocabulary you would gain from using that material? Only you know what you're interests are so its hard for me to suggest materials. If there is something in particular you would like to read about, I'm sure that myself or one of the other members would be able to come up with suggestions.

Thanks everybody, but I'm not looking for specific suggestions (I have seen "nihonjin no shiranai nihongo"... it was kind of cool and silly). I'm more interested in guidelines on how to know if something is good to watch/read. I would consider something "good" if it helps me learn quickly, and it helps me learn lots of different things (vocab, etc) that would be useful in other situations (holding conversations with natives, for example).

Interesting tip, cgreen. I can see what you're saying. I think you might have actually answered my question. You're saying that if I read and watch whatever I'm interested in, then when I go to have a conversation, I probably won't be talking about things I'm uninterested in anyway. So I'll be prepared. Is that right? I think there's truth to this. But I don't know if it's completely true. For example, if everything I'm watching is scripted, as opposed to an unscripted show like a variety show, then maybe I need to watch variety shows in order to get some exposure to more natural, off-the-cuff speech??? (even if i'm not that interested in variety shows)? But maybe I'm overthinking this... maybe it's not really a big deal?

I am no longer studying Japanese so I have no specific suggestions. You need to follow your interests. However, it is a good thing to vary the nature of the things you read and listen to, in order to challenge your brain, and to increase the range of your vocabulary. You may find some new areas of interest.

"nihonjin no shiranai nihongo". is a nice new discovery. Thanks Shige .

I have a lot of trouble finding things in foreign languages that interest me. Much of what I am interested in: computers, teaching English, English literature, North American economics and politics, ice hockey.... is Anglo-centric and best documented in English anyway.

As a B2-C1 in Japanese, I find that I need to focus on Japanese literature in LingQ. This is interesting.

However I have very limited time and energy at the moment. Japanese lit requires more sustained effort than I can give, Therefore, I end up doing a few different things:

I will go onto Facebook and look at Japanese pages, read the comments and import vocab to LingQ. This is interesting from time-to-time.

I will also spend time with my LingQ Japanese literature on iPod just copying a few sentences at a time into a notebook. This is sometimes the only thing I can focus on with limited time and energy. However I feel it is better than nothing and actually somewhat beneficial for my writing.

Finally I read in Japanese to my kids. I guess this is of limited appeal :)