It sounds to me like your issue is you struggle to parse things in real time despite having solid language knowledge (having almost passed N2 and all). To fix that, just talk to people. The only way you’re going to get practice adjusting to processing at real time conversation speeds is through conversation. The thing with podcasts and such is that they can help to some degree, but the issue is that since you yourself are not involved you can get away with just passive listening and skipping over “less important” stuff while convincing yourself that understanding the general idea means you’re actively following along.
If you don’t live in Japan, I would suggest a couple options since you’ll have the free time. 1) Check if there are any Japanese study groups/classes/language exchanges in your area. The town I used to live in offered free classes weekly sponsored by a local school.
2) If there’s nothing nearby, or you just don’t feel like going out, try downloading VRChat and just going into a Japanese language exchange world. You don’t need VR to play, but that was actually how I got my first exposure to conversation with native speakers when I just started studying about one month before moving to Japan.
The lookup/word mining/whatever you want to call it method of study is very popular and I agree with that recommendation, but just apply it to real time conversation instead of books and stuff if you want to increase your speed/pattern recognition specifically.
