personally, i started picking up thing that i’ve learned pretty much right away.
for example, i started wanikani at the same time i started watching pokemon in japanese. in wanikani, you learn the word for cow (うし) and insect (むし) at level 3/4. and in episode 4 of pokemon there’s a stupid pun on those 2 words:
“* When Misty screams “Bug!”, Ash gets in a cow costume and suggests that the bug is a “cowterpie”. In the Japanese version, he instead makes an untranslatable pun: Misty says “Mushi! Mushi! Mushi! …Mushi!” which means “Bug! Bug! Bug! …Bug!”. Ash then says “Ushi?”, meaning “Cow?”.”
(Ash makes a pun out of his halloween costume - YouTube)
i would say that it would be pretty hard to NOT catch those 2 words since one second you see an insect and a second later you see this :
obviously, the context (visual in this case) is essential for this, i doubt i would’ve picked those up in an audio drama where i didn’t know 99% of all the other words. but the more you learn the more stuff you pick up. it feels really nice when you go from understanding a few words to a few sentences to few conversations, etc…
you could also try listening to japanese dub with english subs. while it’s probably less effective for acquisition, that’s way it’s waaaaay easier to pick up stuff you already learned since you know the meaning of the sentence beforehand. this is also valid for “real life” convos