I started studying Japanese in 2002 and did until about 2008. I basically just fell in love with the language after watching a Japanese movie at a friend’s house in 2000.
I spent two years as an exchange student in Kyoto between 2004-2006 and has been to Japan just as a normal tourist since then. Not really into Japanese movies or anime or Manga. Just love going to bars and restaurant and meeting new people and speaking and hearing the language.
37 comments
I’ve always enjoyed anime and manga but it had zero impact on me wanting to learn the language. I met someone who’s Japanese, and at the time we didn’t speak the same language. Since then they’ve studied English and we’ve become good friends. I realised I want to learn their language so we can speak in their native tongue too. So that’s been my motivation to try and learn. To be honest I don’t think the anime and manga interest really adds anything to it for me. But I’m still very early on (slow learner lol) and haven’t tried using it as an aid yet. So not quite what you’re asking but I think still relevant
It was Japanese history and art that originally got me interested in learning the language.
I only really started watching anime recently to immerse in it.
Yeah, I just started learning on my own last year and I’ve never really watched anime or read manga, I might go to Japan in March and just thought it would make the trip more fun if I could speak the language. It turns out though that I actually really enjoy the process of learning Japanese.
I watch anime occasionally and don’t read manga, but I am really learning the language because of the music. I really enjoy the j pop and j rock scenes and have enjoyed the music more the more I can understand without having to look up translations.
I occasionally dabble in anime and manga but what got me into Japanese is videogames.
However I’d also love to read Japanese literature too, especially haiku!
The last time I lived in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, the most meaningful way I connected with the language and culture was through learning to cook local foods.
I already cook a lot of Japanese food, and I’m excited to be able to switch from JustOneCookbook to native materials
Yeah. I used to like anime much more as a child/teen (never been into manga/comic books), but my decision to study Japanese has been independent of that, because I just do not like the vast majority of anime as an adult. Seen maybe 2 anime in the last 5 years, and 0 new anime since I started studying Japanese.
I’ve watched some anime but don’t really enjoy most of it. I just like the language, and enjoy learning it
I’m not interested in manga or anime. I study because I want to read menus, talk to the store clerk, enjoy conversation with the in-laws, etc. For a long time I found it frustrating how much study material is geared towards understanding anime rather than daily life stuff. Like the top words in manga is probably top words my mother in law uses.
In a similar vein, I also found it strange how many tools were geared towards consumption of content and presumed that you were in the know, like I found it overwhelming trying to understand what a texthooker does by looking at the download page.
But I’ve come to the realization that the availability of japanese study tools towards anime/manga is because of the availability of printed content. I’ve also come to realize that even though I don’t want to read manga, maybe it’s useful since it’s dialogue rather than expository content? Maybe I should try to use it even though I don’t care for it.
I started studying because I’d like to visit Japan one day with my girlfriend. And I’d like to be able to speak at a basic level to truly enjoy the visit. I’ve never watched anime, but I’ve started watching a little bit to improve my Japanese.
I just like the language tbh….i thought originally it was because of anime (and I didn’t like manga at the time) but i actually stopped watching any anime or anything i could not immediately use to study japanese for almost 2 years (i focused on reading first for that entire time)…I’ve never been to Japan (nor do I plan to in the immediate future), but once I started learning japanese I just couldn’t stop.
I think it was more the way it sounds, the way it looks…Chinese characters I think are a huge part of why I love the language as I spent 4 hours daily just writing hundreds of kanji for over a year and I would not notice time go by. I also started learning Chinese about 5 months ago…so I definitely think Chinese characters were a huge reason for me
I study japanese because my mother’s side family is Japanese (and I was also born there but now living in spain)
Honestly for me its games, while I dabble in anime time to time. I buy alot of Japanese games as a VG collector. Heck I have a wonder swan which is a Japanese only console. I also heard they still have arcades. Another motivation is that im bored of America, no political reason i just one pf those people who like a change of nature and scenery. So i want to immerse my self. While I don’t have any Japanese connection by friend or heritage. I often find my self liking Japanese architecture, art, culture, and myths very appealing. It is on my mind on how people see me. I think what. separates interests in the Manga/Anime from general is to what extend is one willing to learn more and do more than just reading anime and manga.
I started learning out of curiosity about the language and kind of stuck to it. I only started watching anime in order to at least have some japanese input when I was too busy to study actively (same with drama, youtube, podcasts,..). I still watch anime now and then and really enjoy it if I find one that interests me. But it was never a major part of (or the reason for) my studies.
My motivation was the language itself, especially kanji. Then the country of Japan, with music coming in along the way. Not interested in anime or manga.
Japanese literature got me interested in learning the language. I was interested in literature in translation, but then I realized there was a whole world of literature not in translation waiting for me to learn to read it, and that inspired me to learn the language. Had little to do with anime or manga.
I absolutely hate anime. I will start learning Japanese this year and I’m hoping to just find dramas and movies to watch instead.
Japan seems like a more calm society. People mind their own business compared to here in the States. So I’d like to retire in Japan one day. But I’m 21 so I’ll enjoy this period of adulthood til retirement first.
it’s kind of the other way round for me. I’ve always liked Asian food. during the pandemic I was bored and wanted to learn a language that was very different from European languages and Japanese was the one with the most free online material
then I fell in love with the language itself. I now watch a bit of anime since it’s the most available Japanese content.
I mean I love anime and manga (comics in general really) but that had nothing to do with why I got into learning Japanese?
I am into drifting and skiing, of which Japan has both, which has driven me to learn the language. Eventually I’d like to live there for an extended period of time. However, my childhood included playing the original Pokémon games, so my current “learning” milestone to immersion is to be able to play the games in Japanese – it seems manga/anime/games/movies are a good wayward goal for beginners to be motivated to learn.
It is Japanese music and movies from 80s which got me interested in language. Now I have N1+ level and easily understand all, what I need. I’ve tried all possible media in Japanese, and concluded, that I hate / don’t like anime (there are some gems, but an overall industry is of no worth for me), love-dramas (stupid), visual novels (stupid and lewd), vtubers (childish) and the most of manga (boring; exception is history related titles).
My spouse is from Japan, and after my most recent trip there, I realized that I will absolutely need to know it at least at a basic/conversational level to enjoy my time living there once we move from the US to Japan in a few years.
I love rap music, discovered a Japanese rapper a couple of years ago that I absolutely fell in love with and started learning the language because of it. I’ve read a few mangas as a kid, watched a couple of animes but am far from being a fan of it. I love japanese culture though,and learning japanese has motivated me to discover more of it. Hopefully going there in 2 or 3 years once I’m good enough !
I didn’t watch anime really before I started learning Japanese.
I had seen most ghibli films though. The fact that they were animated didn’t play a part really.
My favorite director is sion sono though.
I started watching anime ad I thought it would help my studies. At the moment i still have the English subtitles on . But in all honesty Indonesia think I pick up anything that way.
I started out with slice of live anime and sports anime. Sometimes they are a combination of the two.
To my surprise a lot of anime is of a higher level than western television.
At the moment I watch a lot of .Korean drama and variety. I wish there were more programs in Japanese available. BTW korean drama is in a class of it’s own.
Maybe it is because there is another culture on the screen. I get bored very easily.
Anime seems to be a part of .Japanese culture. For example you will notice a lot of Japanese values in anime. One of them is respect for the elders.
Anyway it is perfectly fine if you don’t watch anime. Half of the Japanese population doesn’t either.
I watched anime when I was young but haven’t watch a single once since learning Japanese. I do like some Japanese video games, though
Me, at least sort of. I am very much into Japanese video games though and I like a few anime shows (I am very selective about which ones – most are awful IMO) but on the whole I am not a huge fan of anime and I outright dislike manga. I have been to Tokyo and I do geek out over the nerd stuff but only the gaming related nerd stuff 😂
I had minimal interest in anime when I started, but at this point I watch maybe 1-2 anime a year. I really just like Japanese music and want to be able to read novels one day. I used to love manga, but I don’t read it much anymore unless I’m using it as practice.
I started studying Japanese because I enjoy the culture in general, but I follow a lot of the Japanese car culture. Ive tried watching anime, but never make it more than a few episodes into a series.
Yeah, I have nothing against anime but have probably only seen maybe 2-3 short series in the past decade. A few months ago, though, a logged into Netflix and there was a preview for some Japanese show, and I thought I should learn Japanese.
I have been watching some anime lately for immersion, and also started watching Japanese live action TV shows, listening to beginner podcasts, listening to Japanese music, etc. But all of that is to help with the study of the language.
I’ve studied a lot of Chinese though, and that’s a major part of my interest in studying Japanese. It’s very interesting to see the similarities and difference between the two. Also, Chinese knowledge is extremely useful when one is studying Japanese (and I imagine vice versa), so I might as well take advantage of that.
For me it started with the language itself. This was when I was a kid and I didn’t know about anime and manga. I also have an interest in Japanese culture and history. Only until like the past couple of years did I get interested in manga only but that’s not my main reason though.
I got into classic English literature somewhere around quarantine time, partly to train my ability to concentrate more for longer periods of time, and after looking for things that immerse the reader in, let’s say, “foreign perspectives”, it started to hit me reading in a foreign language would be a more reliable way to achieve that. I was also trying to remember all this literary vocabulary (the part of the “door frame” you see on the wall surrounding the door isn’t the “frame,” the frame is the part the door sits flush against when closed: the outer part surrounding it on the wall is the architrave), and since I already naturally slip into using words people don’t recognize *anyway,* it also started to hit me that doing the same thing with a foreign language would be far more useful, even if it’s something I would rarely use.
So I was reading in a second language (Spanish) and getting annoyed that it was hard to assess my level, to gauge how good I actually am at learning languages, because I can’t tell how often someone could figure out what things meant from the combination of cognates and context clues even if they hadn’t learned or remembered anything about Spanish. I picked Japanese because there’s really very little way to trick yourself into thinking you’re understanding that when you’re not – if you’re getting it, it’s all memory. And if you’re looking for different perspectives in literature, not too many places in the world were locked on a tiny island cut off from the entire world for five centuries.
I’ve fallen in love with the process of language learning so much that I fully intend to start dabbling into a new language every time my current one gets too easy. My next goal after Spanish and Japanese is Russian, and though I’m guessing 5-10 years before those are at the level I’d want, at that point I will consider French and Chinese. French because having Russian, English, and Spanish means it practically comes for free; Chinese because I love kanji, and though its artistic output doesn’t match its population size right now, I think that’s very likely to change drastically within my lifetime as they crawl out of smokestack poverty. It’s also a way to justify the time spent on Japanese, which I’m otherwise unlikely to get a great deal of actual practical use out of, outside of a visit or two.
Russian is next because it’s obviously a giant in world literature, I love reading in non-Latin scripts, huge bang for the buck in terms of the history and content and world population you cover for the effort, and I also have a new relative who’ll be raised speaking it. I think Japanese and Russian will make a fascinating contrast, considering they’re polar opposites in terms of certain social norms. But all five of these languages (Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, French) are related to high-context cultures, which interests me a lot more than low-context.
As for my history with anime, I liked Rurouni Kenshin for a couple months when I was a kid and I enjoyed Spirited Away. I’m sure I will dabble with it as I’m in the appropriate level in the language, but the long-term goal I’ll be consistent with is literature. There does seem to be more overlap between literature and (some) manga than between literature and Western comic books.
I did watch anime, but anime wasn’t the reason I got into learning it. I just liked the language, and that’s how I started learning it. I usually try to read Japanese online for practice or watch Japanese news channels on YouTube (ANN Japan 24, Fuji TV, TV Tokyo). I also watch videos in Japanese that sometimes have subtitles and sometimes they don’t. A good practice
I’m not interested in either. I don’t like Japanese culture and I have only grown to hate this language. But oh well.
I watched before learning some anime but I wasn’t a huge nerd by any means. I started learning because I am way too interested in Japanese metal and gothic music. I still don’t watch much anime and spend most time reading.
Yeah! I love Japanese movies and food. That slowly turned into a love of Japanese history, literature and now travel
So I can play a wider variety of videogames, initially 😅 I’m not hugely into anime, but if I ever become fluent I probably would enjoy going through a few favorites in their original form.
Mostly, I love language learning for its own sake. I think my reasoning for learning French in high school was so I could do a better fake accent and vague feelings of affection for the idea of the world’s “art capital.”
But it’s cool how learning another language throws assumptions about your own native language into question. Like, English grammar isn’t *correct*–and Japanese especially is such a mechanically-different language, it’s fascinating trying to just get my brain to work that way.