I’m actually not a fan! I mentioned Murakami because his works are famously complex. There was some tw: sexual abuse stuff in 19Q4 and I never checked out anything else because I was too squicked out.
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I strongly disagree with OP, I think Japanese is a very expressive language. There are so many ways that you can change your own speech to express different things about yourself. The language changes its grammar based on who you’re speaking with and the relative social positions you have with the people you’re speaking to, and the kinds of sentence ending particles you use lets you change the tone and feeling of what you’re saying without even adding any extra words. Beyond that, the language is filled with tons of beautiful metaphoric expressions, the huge list of yojijukugo like 明鏡止水 that express deep and complicated ideas in short utterances… If you’ve never looked up the words to Japanese songs you really should, many of them are poetic and beautiful. The translations rarely do them justice. Also, as others have pointed out, there is no lack of synonyms in Japanese.
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Any recommendations for modern japanese music?
I’m very picky about music, only japanese stuff, off the top of my head, that I can think off, that I like is YMO and Hibari Misora (Kawa No Nagare No Youni (Yoni?) is one of my favorite songs.
Also, one YMO album features multiple skits in japanese which aren’t translated (yet), which is tragic.
So let’s say I spent 5000 hours playing guitar at school, and then stopped.
Furthermore, lets value my time then at around £5 an hour, as a rough guess as to how much I’d be paid for a part time job back them.
That’s ~£25,000 worth of cost for playing guitar (infact lets round it up to £30,000 to acount for lessons and equipment). As long as I valued the enjoyment I get from learning to play the guitar at above £6 an hour, it was absolutely worth it, even if I never touch the guitar again!
And that’s not even touching on the ancillary skills I gained from that (as @RedOliveBlue pointed out).
Edit: £6 an hour is pretty good going compared to a lot of modern entertainment 
As long as you can accept that such a thing is entirely subjective. I think the easy and expressive grammar of Japanese is a pro. Many people would probably disagree though…
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I would disagree on the subjectivity.
They have pros and cons. Period.
It is then for you to make out your preference.
Again, wish I could find where I read that, my copy of Marx is also in Germany, and I‘m in England for at least December, if it ends up being that, where it stood.
I, too, don’t understand why you try to make me see your way in the usage of time. Let’s agree to disagree, no?
Can you explain how you would objectively decide the pros and cons of a language? Objectively based on what? Just wondering
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How can things be objectively considered pros or cons for a language?
Is the fact that Japanese uses kanji a pro or a con?
It represents a huge hurdle for learners, so it’s a con?
It allows for nuanced expression without changing the word used, so it’s a pro?
I probably wouldn’t be studying Japanese or living in Japan if kanji weren’t used, because it’s what got me interested in the language. There couldn’t be a bigger pro.
But every day people who love Japanese culture quit learning it because kanji is too daunting.
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English, for example, does not offer the ability to have a respectful article for someone.
German has „Sie“, which is the standard, among polite society, for everybody you don’t know, until you would be considered friends, and one gave the other permission to call eachother Du (He/She).
Japanese, of course, has -san and -sama.
I truly wish, that I could find my source.
I don’t that‘s necessarily my fault in this case, but we were talking about very different things.
But how is that objectively a con? (Or are you saying it’s a pro?)
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Okay, it’s my fault then.
None of my posts have been replied to, so I must be doing something wrong.
(Shrug)
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@Goliath_2412 Let me put it another way, since I’m someone who likes to ‘optimise’ my life. (I even frequently struggle with focusing on studying for my university course because I’m not sure what I’ll get out of it. My lack of a clear vision leads me to ask myself, ‘What am I doing all this for again?’) First of all, unless it’s objectively harmful or takes you away from many other important things in your life, no ‘hobby’ can possibly be a waste of time. Hobbies tend to exist to help us relax and unwind, and so unless your hobby is causing you unnecessary stress and irritation, they’re frankly unlikely to fail to fulfil their purpose. Secondly, in the specific case of learning a language, any form of learning will be useful. It teaches you new ways of looking at ideas and new ways of thinking, and helps you to understand another culture and how people in that culture communicate. Plus, if a language is sufficiently widely spoken, and you’re sufficiently proficient, you’ll also get to talk to people or consume the products that were produced with native speakers in mind. Language learning is enriching and teaches you to spot patterns and to think via analogy in order to understand how to map a new language to your native language. Finally, just a thought specific to something you’ve been saying:
This is not true. I mean, OK, sure, you’ll never be quite the same as a native speaker because you won’t have the same set of experiences: you won’t have memories of spending your childhood in that language, and you won’t have memories of all the people you grew up with speaking that language. However, being practically indistinguishable from a native speaker and being able to speak almost without thinking, as naturally as you would in your native language, and without making (much of) an effort to translate your thoughts to and from your native language? All this is doable. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I’ve done it with French. Depending on who you ask (depends on the region they’re from), I have either a light accent or am completely accentless. I used several French expressions in my essays back in language school that even my native French teacher didn’t know, and although my results do vary from time to time, it hasn’t been rare for me to outscore a large part of my class (yes, in France) for French oral exam practice, even though the topic is usually literary or philosophical essays. It’s fully possible to do just as well as native speakers in large swathes of language competencies, and to even exceed them, even if you may not be on par with them in everything: I personally still struggle with some forms of informal dialogue, because I didn’t really bother with slang, and I don’t think I have much of a ‘French’ personality when it comes to such discussions. I’m also having confidence issues (quite illogical, really) that are making me hesitate much more than I need to or should. If this is one of your reasons for worrying about whether you’re wasting your time, it shouldn’t be: all that’s needed is sufficient exposure and a suitable amount of effort.
Yeah, I’ve heard that his works can be a little… ‘too much information’ and often delve into NSFW situations. I don’t know about the quality of the writing, which may perhaps be excellent, but that was enough to keep me away.
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Because it’s a missing feature, and it is seen, as I know, as a big gripe to polite people, who are then forced to converse in such a, comparatively, awkward manner.
Meaning specific people, meaning subjectively?
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That’s the calculation you’re asking for 
But you can still express politeness in English and it’s not awkward at all. It’s just different to what you’re used to…
I’m starting to feel like what you’re really asking is “can I use Japanese in the same way that I use German” to which the answer is quite clearly no.
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I instead focus on my gripes with culture and forced circumstances, personal stuff.
The same thing that applies to you in french, applies to me in english, down straight really. But you’ll never know all the words, sayings, idioms.
(I for one struggle with body parts, fruit names, tree names, and very specific stuff like Epiphany. And since I like writing, it would be so great if words like Epiphany could come to me naturally, which they do in german, but I think never will in english.
Also, around people I’m comfortable with, my confidence in english far improves.
Not everybody speaks slang, I did not want to generalize.
If you want to miss my point, then that’s that.
Maybe it is.
Not a unfounded thought, considering I relegated english to a practical language, and not my language of choice today:
No no, I meant that because only a specific group of people held that opinion then that means it is subjective. Not objective as you were arguing (for lack of a better word).
I tried not to point out the irony but I couldn’t resist as you, in fact, missed my point, sassy pants
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Purposefully skirting around the current discussion
They say an example is worth a thousand yen (or something like that?) so as a counterpoint to Japanese being vague and best suited for poetry here is a Wikipedia article on Elliptic-curve cryptography.
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