I’ve been watching and following TokiniAndy’s Genki series last year and learning Japanese altogether has been a really enjoyable experience for me! I would always be excited to open my textbook and just learn the crap out of the chapters and do all the practices for hours. I even thought about moving to Japan to work there (well ever since I was a small weeb anyway lol), but ever since I told that to my sisters, I realized that uprooting my life someday to go to a country where the work environment is r o u g h isn’t a good idea. Overall it just made me sad and left me with no motivation whatsoever to continue learning Japanese. I’ve been thinking about picking it up again for awhile, and I was hoping to ask the people in this subreddit if it’s still worth it to learn the language?
3 comments
nope
Let’s think about motivations and goals.
Formerly, it would seem you had motivation to follow a combination of current interests with a new hobby in which perhaps you had no real goals. But developed a fantasy of utilising your new hobby only to have it bought to reality.
Think about what Japanese can do for you. What are your interests and how can it benefit you? What exactly can it give you that your mother tongue can’t? For example, localisation is stronger than ever. You can enjoy Japanese media without learning at all, and in good time too. English releases are often simultaneous compared with how it was long ago, where learning the language would be more beneficial.
My advice is, do more research in to working in Japan. The work culture is forever changing. There are also foreign companies with their own ethics that operate there. What kind of work do you want to do? That’s a good place to start. Grab a piece of paper, think about why you want to learn and if that’s enough to dedicate a large proportion of your life to it. Draw up some goals. For example, pass JLPT N1, get a job in programming in Tokyo, watch Full Metal Alchemist with full comprehension without subs, play Final Fantasy 21 without lookups.
Is it worth it? To me it is, I love the way Japanese sounds, the language differences to my own, the ability to play video games and watch video without English subs and in it’s original communication, the longevity of my brain health. That is what keeps me motivated, as well as my goals.
time to switch hobbies