Best way to listen and understand Japanese?

I've been learning slowly over the last year of how to improve my Japanese, though I still find it quite difficult to understand since people speak so quickly and all of the words sound like they are mashed together.

Does anyone have feedback on what helped them to understand listening and speaking Japanese?

I watched a lot of TV programs (on YouTube). Start with news programs where announcers speak standard Japanese clearly. Then move onto dramas/variety shows where some slangs and regional dialects are sometimes spoken. That can improve listening/comprehension skills.

Thank you for the information. Do you recommend any specific shows to watch? Before I had tried to watch some comedy and gaki no tsukai, but they speak a lot of slang and rather quickly.

For purposes of language-learning/listening practice, animation tends to be easier than live-action. Voice actors are chosen for their ability to enunciate, characters are less likely to talk over each other, and the fact that the recording isn't happening in a real-world environment means less incidental background noise to obscure the dialogue.

Anime is not recommended bc they use too many new words.
If you can read Japanese subtitles, you can use YouTube, BD/DVD and more.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/category/28/?type=tvEpisod...

Real conversations include not only Japanese, but also foreign languages, English,
Japanese-language English(Wasei-Eigo), dialects(Hougen), slangs(Zokugo) and more.
Furthermore, since various words are omitted from it,
it is common that you cannot be understood immediately.

https://origamijapan.net/origami/2018/06/01/wasei-english/

Listening to news broadcasts and clips is good for standard proper Japanese listening practice. Not so good for informal/colloquial language.

I like NHK News (Japanese podcasts) and also the video clips on the NHK web site. I like to read the articles first and then listen to the associated clips (not all articles have them but many do). Their �gNews Web Easy�h section is particularly good if your kanji and reading skills are not too polished. I love News Web Easy...
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/
Other news agencies have online articles and clips, but I find NHK to be very easy to use, and they don�ft have a paywall for their articles.

i think best way is to listen to audio files that come along with japanese learning books.

they have always very exact pronunciation, further you can chose a level that is appropriate to you and also there exists usually some way of transcription and written exercises ...

There are some great free learning resources on the Japan Foundation website, including audio clips like Erin's Challenge.

https://www.jpf.org.uk/language/teaching_resources.php