Japanese proficiency

I was wondering how long averagely would it take to be able to have a basic understanding of Japanese and be able to have a basic conversation with a native speaker.

I'm going to Japan in a year on home stay and right now, my Japanese is very basic. By the time I leave, I plan to have studied about 72 hours with classes. Where do you think that will take me on top of my basic understanding right now? Any feedback?

Everyone learns at a different pace, but just for reference, my non-Japanese spouse, when he came to Japan with practically no knowledge of the language, says he got to a level he could "cope" with the Japanese language after one year of full-time study at a Japanese language school in Japan. And back then barely anyone spoke English, so almost full immersion outside the classes as well.

Ohh okay, good reference. Thank you so much for the feedback!

Depends what you mean by "basic" I suppose, but I would say five hundred to a thousand hours of study (not just classroom hours). These things are extremely hard to measure, though.