Were you using simplelogin.io, which is part of Proton? It is actually possible to reply or send mails from the aliases you create there. The feature is called reverse-alias.

I tried that, but I much prefer the haptics of real paper and writing with an actual pen. Also, I really like the look of ink on paper. Of course, there are still cases when a tablet is just the best. For example, when annotating PDFs.

pro tip: you can still write ugly if you use a fountain pen

Yes, but for my own notes it’s not a problem if the handwriting is ugly. I still like to write by hand, even if my handwriting looks pretty messy.

I am selective about what shows and movies I watch. They have to be at my language level. It is important that, with my knowledge of the language, I can understand what’s going on. Otherwise, it will just be frustrating. I don’t necessarily have to know all the words and grammar because, over time, I’ll automatically pick things up and improve. For me, the whole point of immersion is that it does not feel like learning. That’s how I stay motivated. So, if a movie is too hard to understand for me, then I just stop watching it and look for something else. As I improve, I will be able to watch more and more movies. That’s how I learned English, and I hope it will work for Japanese as well.

Whenever possible, I avoid looking up words and try to deduce their meaning from the context. If a word is used very frequently and I still don’t understand it, then I look it up with an iPhone app called “Nihongo”. It does have OCR search (it can read Kanji from photos), you can draw Kanji with your finger, use radicals, or write the pronunciation with hiragana or romanji and I almost always find what I am looking for. I am sure there are similar dictionary apps for Android as well.

I don’t use flashcards because they are boring. If a word does not come up frequently enough for me to remember it, then I probably won’t need it anyway.

This is how I do things, and it may not work for you, but I hope that you’ll at least get some ideas of how your learning can become less frustrating.