Does your significant other support your Japanese studies?
If you don’t have a significant other, do your friends and family support your studies?
Or perhaps do they also study Japanese?
Studying Japanese is a huge time-sink, and it’s hard to share the joys of the hobby with those that are not involved. I’m interested to hear about the role that studying Japanese has in your day-to-day life with your peers and loved ones.
My significant other is a Japanese woman who doesn’t speak English.
She is unsurprisingly supportive!
My mom is happy I found a passion, when she feels better we want to start learning Mandarin together as well. My brother doesn’t really care much for it XD
Hmm well I live alone and tend to be a bit of a loner anyways, so I dig myself into hobbies and my friends and family don’t really get involved. They think it’s kinda cool and quirky when they hear me speak/practice… but they know it’s one of my hobbies.
Yea it’s a time sink and I do wish I had a friend or loved one to share it with, but it’s ok 
No, not really. But I tell them, this is the only I can measurably study far, at least level-wise.
And when I learn Kanji, I learn other things Japanese along too.
I intended to do this to the end, probably all enlightened. I want to know the taste of fighting hard until the end, and acquiring the result, even for something not really that useful in life.
But if I have to use Japanese for my occupation, I would probably need like N1 or N2, which is… quite hard.
I think most of my friends and family are indifferent to it. Although I do have one longtime friend that started studying with me and still is. So he’s pretty interested in it.
Another one of my longtime friends gets annoyed whenever I send him Japanese writing. Specifically hiragana and kanji. But I’ve started him sending and receiving romaji in small doses. So… it’s only a matter of time…
Hmm I’m the only person in my family who’s interested enough in learning languages to put real time into it, so they’re very supportive but tend to think I’m better than I am at whatever language I’m studying at the time haha
My family thinks it’s all very interesting and wonderful that I get to pursue something that I am passionate about at university, although of course I was subject to the obligatory “but what are you going to use it for” questions when I first started about a year ago. But overall they are extremely supportive, and already send me links to job listings where they look for communication skills (as that is the direction I want to go in). It’s extremely motivating!
Learning Japanese and now moving to Japan has given my family an excuse to visit a country they never would of considered travelling to otherwise. Also I met my boyfriend in Japanese class and now we live in Japan so that worked out alright I guess.
However my mum low key wanted me to keep learning French, she thought I suited France more than Japan and imagined me living living in a tiny Parisian apartment (though I ended up living in a reasonably sized Tokyo apartment).
My family is unanimously supportive of my studying; they consider learning languages very important, but none of them study Japanese themselves.
My significant other is simply in awe at my studying and learning motivation, but he doesn’t have much interest in studying himself.
My immediate family was supportive as they always are of any academic/intellectual endeavour. I suspect if I had decided to learn modern dance instead they would’ve been more puzzled.
My grandpa, who’s super old and a proper grumpy old man who remembers WWII (not that our country was involved), just grumbled, “You’re learning the language of fascism,” and carried on. He’s warmed up to it now that I’ve told him my Japanese misadventures and toilet tales.
Hmm…
Family:
Friends:
Work colleagues:
So yeah, no support really. Just me doing it for me.
During high school and college, though I wasn’t consistently studying or taking classes or anything, my family was always kind of discouraging of my interest in Japan. They just thought it was silly to study an Asian language when I could be learning Spanish or “something useful”.
My acceptance into JET was also a moment of confusion for them. Like, they knew I’d always wanted to live here, but I think after my study abroad experience they didn’t expect me to go back?
Then, my mom visited me a year after I moved to Japan and she told me she was proud of me for the first time in my life because I “navigate the subway like a professional”, haha. She also cried a little, which was weird.
No idea, I haven’t told anyone.
My husband is supportive as long as I’m enjoying it. He makes fun of me for using Wanikani too much though. 
My family thinks what I’m doing is kinda useless and doesn’t understand why I’m doing it so I rarely speak with them about it. They were really surprised when I went to Japan on vacation which was a little funny since it should be natural for me to go.
My friends are either interested or indifferent about it.
My family was a bit worried at first bc ‘what kind of job can you do if you study Japanese???’ but now they’ve realised it’s my thing, I’m good at languages and they know I’ll get by.
My mom, on the other hand, is almost as obsessed with Japan as I am and she fully supports me, she wishes she could learn the language but she doesn’t have time 
(I think she’s a bit jealous of me going to study Japanese at uni too XP Good jealousy though)
My parents are pretty indifferent about it,
My parents and family are happy for me, because they’re happy I found something I’'m passionate about and they know it’s necessary because I’m going on an exchange to Japan xD
My dad made a throwaway comment about the fact that he was somewhat surprised that I was still learning it. More surprised, in fact, that I spent my entire two-week holiday (at about 5-8 hours a day or longer) from school learning Japan, one of his clients offered to get me a job in Japan at the end of this year (which I didn’t take him up on at the moment, but didn’t decline, either), a guy at school I talk to more often than not said that I’d: “better know Japanese by the time university rolls around if you’re spending this much time on it,” the two teachers I asked about getting a full-time job in translation off-handedly last week offered some advice (or the substitute who knew more about it did, anyway), but maybe that’s a few too many people for the title, so I’ll stop there.
It’s a tinge above indifferent, I’d say.
Ooo, this is an interesting topic!
I don’t think my family totally understands it, but they’re pretty supportive anyway 
My parents have supported my weird hobbies/obsessions since childhood, so it’s just another weird hobby to support, I guess. They buy me the Japanese learning books that I ask for as Christmas/birthday presents, and my mom’s loaning me some money to go on a trip to Japan in a couple months. No interest in learning it themselves, as far as I can tell, but at least I can talk to them about it and they won’t shut me down. My immediate family’s pretty open-minded and intellectually curious about random topics, so they don’t mind.
Other than that, I pretty much don’t tell people that I’m learning Japanese. In my experience, it goes one of two ways: 1) they expect you to be instantly amazing at it, and they get disappointed when they find out you’re not, or 2) they don’t get it, and you get that subtle, disdainful "…ok, weirdo 
" look.
I feel like it is kind of a weird hobby for me to have because I don’t have a “socially acceptable reason” to be learning it (I don’t have any Japanese friends/family members, I don’t need it for my job, etc.). But why does there have to be some big justification for it? Do I ask you why you’re so into Crossfit, which honestly sounds like a new form of torture to me? Do I ask you why you enjoy going bar-hopping, which is something I 100% do not see the appeal of? No, I don’t. It’s a hobby. It’s fun for me, and Japan is interesting. Get over it. But people don’t, so I say my hobby is reading or Netflix and move on.
I have a friend who probably would have learned it with me if I had started while we were still in school together (she was kind of the one who put the idea into my head), but we’re in this kind of weird, limbo place in our friendship right now because we don’t live that close anymore and we’re both awkward people, so…it’s a long story, but I haven’t really told her I’m doing it. I’m in a weird place with friends in general right now, because I’ve been changing locations, work has been taking up a lot of my time, and I honestly don’t know how to make new friends as an adult. The only people I regularly talk to are people at work, which…see above.