I live pretty far away from my friends so I only see them a few times a year. I told them all when I started studying but there’s not a lot of time to talk about it when we’re catching up on other things, so it doesn’t get brought up a lot. One of my friends (who likes Kurosawa and languages in general) asks me if I’m still studying now and then, but that’s it.
My family doesn’t care. Not that they’d have any basis to be unsupportive, since I’m an adult and studying in my free time as a hobby.
most of my friends are indifferent, i have a few that are from japan, and few who are fluent, and one who is also learning, and they are all very excited that I’m learning - although I think my own skills are too poor, so they don’t have the patience to help me, lol.
Since my ancestry is Japanese, my family is pretty supportive, although none of them speak it themselves.
While my girlfriend is probably pretty unhappy with the amount of time I spend studying Japanese, she’s fairly supportive and is always (or at least pretends to be) impressed with the amount of motivation/discipline I have…although from reading the forums, there are many who study much more than I do, heh
Everyone I know attaches my desire to learn Japanese to my anime hobby (which may or may not be founded). So I get some flack for that, but learning another language in general is supported by my family and friends in general. Since I’m in the Air Force, no one really says it’ll be useless. By knowing Japanese, I am more likely to be stationed in a place where my knowledge will be useful.
My significant other cheers me on with shouts of “勉強!” and chasing me up to the computer to go do my WaniKani. (Because we are nerds 5eva and it makes us both laugh.)
The rest of my family considers it a quirky hobby. There’s so many worse things I could be doing. snort
This is a step above mocking me for it, or taking flack from the older family members who remember WWII and think I’m wasting my time on an evil language, so I’ll take ‘quirky hobby’ as far as it’ll get me.
My parents think it’s great that I’m learning Japanese because it might be useful on the job market. They also like to show off that their daughter “knows” Japanese, and make it sound like I’m actually good at it - which I am not haha.
A couple of friends occasionally ask me to translate stuff, e.g. dialogues on comic strips/images, text on posters, etc…small stuff. And one friend got motivated to pick up Japanese again after I mentioned WaniKani and that I’m trying to study daily so that’s awesome.
In short: My parents and friends are pretty supportive, which I am grateful for.
Edit: My relatives in general are curious and supportive. Wouldn’t want to forget them haha
Dependent on the person, it varies between indifference and annoyance. Most are just indifferent to it. My dad sometimes tells me to shut up when I practice pronunciations and he happens to hear me (one of his responses was to make a fairly racist impersonation). People have also said “why don’t you learn a more useful language?”, which is odd, because nobody I know has a second language at all. My friend knows I like anime, and jokingly comments that I am trying to become “Lord of all weebs” by learning it. When I mention that I plan to go to Japan for a few years to be an ALT soon, the indifferent response suggests they probably think it’s some pipe dream and I won’t actually do it.
my immediately family know I have an interest in Japan and language for a long time. I also have interests in many other parts of the world (traveled to Jordan in college in 2001). funnily enough, this past weekend my 4yr old nephew was over and saw me doing reviews on pc with wanikani and asked what i was doing. I told him learning japanese words. apparently, according to my brother, the kid thinks other languages are just made up things at his age. So he kept telling me i was wrong when i would pronounce the words for him lol. he’d correct it by saying whatever english word came to his goofball head first.
My dad is supportive about it, but not my mom. Only my close friends know I study Japanese.
I’ll never understand how people could be against someone learning a language. I can understand indifference, but whatever.
Girlfriend is learning too
Parents are getting sick of my complaining about how bad I am at this…
I’m told it’s the “devil’s tongue.” 
Other than that, my parents are supportive about it. I don’t go out of my way to tell people that I know Japanese, but it’s nice seeing their reactions about it.
I tell my friends that I am a “secret weeb” xD
Quite a bit of my extended family is anti-intellectual if that makes any sense. They tend to pride themselves on blue-collar know-how and what not. I chalk a lot of it up to the American political climate, with republicans tending to discredit science and universities in general.
My stepfather, for example, thought that my taking Japanese in University was a poor choice. After explaining that the University required me to take a foreign language, he said I should have taken Spanish or something more useful. Not that he was ever a fan of me going to college anyways. I made him eat his words when I got to go on a free trip to Japan through a study-abroad program.
I’ve had similar reactions from a lot of my family. But as long as someone spends ~2 hours a day watching television, I don’t think it’s rational for them to think I’m wasting my time learning another language.
/rant
Is your family from China or Korea?
They were always supportive! There is a large demand of Japanese-speaking personnel in my country and now I’m using Japanese to make a living.
I don’t have loved ones so who cares 
You’re at level 60 on Wanikani, since I aspire to the same heights I wanna say: keep it up! よく頑張った！
Not too supportive. I scaled down my time dedicated to Japanese learning significantly over this year.
Bullsh!t
You do you.
Luckily the closest person to me is super supportive, but everyone else is on a scale of pure impartial to outright opposition.
@SwiftElk The struggle is real. There are too many people just against stuff for no good reason. I’m all for time wasting (BOTW has stolen my motivation for anything but Japanese) but my Japanese is purely recreational and there is no reason people should be judged for wanting to expanded their knowledge or connection to other peoples.
I grew up what most people would probably call really poor. My parents had a small cattle farm, we had all we needed but we didn’t really have much more than that. So I grew up around the so called blue collar and this past year has been weird for me as the ones I knew weren’t as close minded as many seem to be…but I think I was just lucky in that the small community around us had traveled due to military services and world wars services (lot of older people in our area, not as many younger post boomer gen doing farming) and they had a broadened sense of the world. This whole anti-intellectual movement is bizarre to me, I can’t imagine an existence where exploring and learning new things isn’t de facto mode of existence.
I agree with you!
And just to be clear, I’m not saying that blue-collar people or rural folk tend to be close-minded or anything… Just that my family is like that so that’s who I have experience with. Of course I do have supportive family members as well. And I’ve also received flack from city-folk as well, but it tends to be more of the “you’d be better off studying engineering” criticisms.