on learning japanese

so theres one month to go until summer comes and ive made 2 pledges:

1) to go to the gym almost every day to prepare for the fuji climb (even though about 3000 people a day climb the mountain in the summer and children/grandparents even do it)
2) improve my japanese

the japanese would be the top priority at this point as im at point where i could decide to just leave it and be content with the survival japanese that i already know or try to improve to the point where id be able to communicate at some elementary level in a japanese conversation. id like to do the latter and hopefully by august ill have some results. im rather slow so who knows but its worth a try i think.