Those who don’t care about japanese media, why study?

25 comments

1. I was into Japanese sub culture long, long time ago and it was my biggest motivator. Like you, i felt accomplished when i recognized what i’ve learned in real life situations. With life happening, i just naturally lost interest in anime/manga and other Japanese media but I think my biggest motivator atm is to not lose what i’ve accomplished so far! Also, i’ve always thought it was a pretty language to listen to and the nagare of the sounds are just so calming!

2. For me, as part of the diaspora, I’ve always looked in amazement at other people in the diaspora (and those outside of the diaspora) who could acquire Japanese. I grew up taking little classes here and there, so I learned hiragana and katakana at a young age, but never learned the nuts and bolts and barely surpassed 50 kanji until high school/college.

   Now, I consider the language an integral part of reconnecting with my ancestors. Their names had meaning, their koseki have meaning, and if I am to return to Japan (hopefully soon), I consider it a privilege to connect with nihonjin on a deeper level than many in the diaspora who have a huge language barrier.

   Edit: As a part of the Uchinaanchu diaspora too, I recently heard a proverb that I certainly agree with:「生(ぅん)まり島(じま)ぬ言葉(くとぅば)忘(わすぃん)ねー、国(くに)ん忘(わすぃ)ゆん」translated by someone as: “Forgetting your native tongue means forgetting your native country.”

3. For me, it’s industry opportunity with art and videogames.

4. I personally never cared for anime or manga (hate anime art style), I enjoy the language on its own, I like the grammar, how sentences can be structured, how you can use different registers (honorifics),I like that it’s very fluid language, so for me learning the language on its own is fun. The only real application that I go for is Nintendo games, I enjoy those.

5. I’m interested in my heritage. Dad’s side of the family was working in Hawaii and stopped speaking it after Pearl Harbor for some reason*, so I’ve always felt a disconnect from that side of things. I still have family in Japan. My side of the family has been out of country for quite some time, so we’re all just kind of aware of each other, not particularly close or anything.

   Will this pursuit will turn into anything other than an interesting skill to toss out at parties, I can’t say. But I hope it does, somehow.

   *I know why, it’s just a bit of levity.

6. Why don’t you start a YouTube channel talking in Japanese? Perhaps reporting on what goes on where you live, or on your hobby, etc.

7. I started learning at school and I initially became interested in the language because of the writing. Seemed like a cool “secret code” to younger me, coming from Europe where I only heard of my classmates learning English or German.

   I did get into anime for a bit when I was younger, but I don’t consume much Japanese media these days. A drama here and there is about it.

   I’d consider myself fluent, though not at a level I’d like to be. I can hold basic conversations in Japanese and consume simple media without too much trouble, but I need to broaden my vocabulary and really need to focus on kanji again. I practice by texting Japanese friends online or finding people through HelloTalk.

8. I think you’re right. It’s very challenging. There’s a low chance of success. If you’re not super into the pop-culture, what’s the point? But the pop-culture is very interesting so…

9. I use Japanese every day in my job but I find most (not all but most) Japanese media boring or cringey. I don’t watch anything Japanese now, but I did suffer through terrace house when I realized my casual conversation skills sucked and I didn’t have as much exposure to that level of speech back when I was studying (everything at you study is super teinei/keigo). Sometimes I will watch a Disney or international movie with the dubs, and occasionally a good Japanese movie comes out, I guess.

   I listen to news and industry podcasts to keep my listening skills up, and I should probably get a tutor soon for speaking since I just moved away from Japan, but I send emails in Japanese a few times a week for work and read Japanese documents or emails nearly every day.

   I’m motivated to keep up the language bc it’s bumped my pay up about 40% and makes me stand out from the crowd when it’s time to look for a new job.

   But I’m not interested in becoming dead fluent/pop culture level fluent because I need to pick up more Mandarin for work and I don’t have time/interest to do more than maintain Japanese at this point. I find Chinese language dramas more fun/less dumb that Japanese ones at least right now. Go a few years back and I think there’s some good stuff I’ve already watched but…Japanese media is very stagnant IMO.

10. I don’t not care, but I don’t care much. I’m doing it because I wanted to tackle one of the world’s hardest languages, see what fluency feels, and leverage it to get a nice job at an international company. I also like a lot of the culture, the geography, and the architecture.

11. My wife is japanese and I want to respect her culture and her parents when I meet them. And if we ever move to japan, I will already know the language.

12. For the culture. American culture is too in your face for me and japan seems to have a lot of things figured out that americans would rather not even care about, generally. Tho japan isnt exactly caring for “my people”, trans people.

13. I love japanese because it’s hard. That’s why I wanna learn arabic after I’m done with it. I love taking on challenges that few people would.

14. I started to learn some basic Japanese phrases for an upcoming trip. I fell in love with it. While I was there I became fascinated with the written language.

    Now I’m learning it because I’m moving there in a couple of months.

15. I worked in a Japanese restaurant so it was fun to be able to communicate better with my friends/coworkers.

    I don’t mind anime or manga but I definitely don’t watch/read them very often. For immersion I tend to watch Japanese news casts or listen to Japanese radio stations.

16. I do like some Japanese media but even if I didn’t like partake in some of the popular stuff I have a passion for the language itself. Honestly hard to describe but just the sounds, combination of the writing systems and varied grammar and conjugation that span different time periods but all build upon each other to form modern Japanese is just wonderful. I have a lot of words and phrases that are very dear to me and Japanese really had become a part of how I express myself internally. In short I just mean I think in Japanese language a lot. I just pounded so much Japanese into my head since high school and it definitely affected my ways of processing language even in my native.

17. Uh- at the moment, it’s the satisfaction that comes from understanding something I didn’t understand before.

    Language is interesting that way.

    Years ago, I didn’t understand a word of Jap. After exposing myself to it, somehow- even though I didn’t consciously register the words by translating word for word, I could somehow understand spoken Japanese or understand the words by reading it.

    To me, it seems quite mystifying how my brain is even able to understand it. I live in a country where basically no one speaks Jap.

    Aside from anime or VNs, there’s basically zero opportunity to use Jap in my lifetime.

    And at that, I don’t even watch anime nowadays and I’ll never read a VN in Jap.

    Which means I have no practical use for the language.

    But y’know what? It’s quite satisfying being able to slowly understand a language- that was once complete gibberish so I’ll keep going on this path of learning a pointless language just for the sake of it.

18. I simply enjoy language learning. I saw online once that the CIA put Japanese as the most difficult language for native English speakers to learn. Now I don’t know if that’s true, but it intrigued me nonetheless, so I decided to start learning.

    I love linguistics and language, and Japanese is very very different from English, so if’s extremely interesting and fun to study!!! 🙂

19. I love the historical side of Japanese culture. Like Kyoto over Tokyo if you get my drift.

20. I live in Japan and have a gf that I plan to marry. It sucks when I spent time with her family and I can’t talk to them. We went on a trip to Sendai, and I had a blast, but I couldn’t carry a conversation with them. At least I could talk to her 5 year old niece.

    Two of my biggest motivations is to be able to speak with her family and change jobs here.

21. History/Literature. Never cared for video games or anime.

22. To speak to Japanese people and to travel the country.
    Is it such a hard concept to grasp for weebs that Japan has so much more to offer than anime?

23. The nature, the food, the fishing, the adventurous people – blows any fantasy anime out of the window.

24. Well, I chose it as my college major.

    Ngl, when I started, I did it thinking about all the money imma make, but then I fell in love with the language and some concepts we don’t have. I’m trying to get into listening stuff, but I guess Japanese people don’t play the games I’m interested in.

    Anyways, now I study because I want to pass N2 at least, hopefully N1. If I keep at it, I’ll be N2 next year٩( ‘ω’ )و

25. History and culture could also be a major factor. Languages are a major pillar of a culture and you can glean a lot from how words transformed over time.