I want to know “When you started learning Japanese?”, “Why you wanted to study Japanese?”, “What is your favorite thing about studying Japanese?”, “What’s your favorite part about Japanese Culture?” and “What do you have the most fun doing in Japanese?”. You can give any other details if you want.
I started learning on July 4, 2017
As for me I started studying Japanese because I wanted to study another language, but the reasons deepened as I learned more like I wanted to understand anime, and Japanese music, then it deepened more and now I love the culture and I always want to learn more about it. Plus one of my drives was I didn’t want to be like most people that try to learn something or be spatacular at something but didn’t have the patience and resolve to tough it out.
My favorite thing about studying Japanese is I start to slowly understand things more and more in reading and listening as I study and things that I thought were complicated once I learned about it, it usaully is simplier than I think. Another thing is I am apart of a great community and I feel like I’m apart of Japanese people like apart of me is Japanese because I think by studying the Language and culture you can understand their mindset and the way they are. I know it sounds weird.
My favorite thing about J Culture is Anime because I do love a lot of things about the culture but I’ve been watching anime since 2006 and it has had a big impact on my life and is a big part of my life.
As for the last question I have the most fun talking to Japanese people in Japanese and listening to Japanese music. Oh and being apart of the communtity! 
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Here I thought this was about Vanilla telling the world how he wants to learn Chinese, move there and marry @UntitledName .
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I was thoroughly confused by this before I remembered that I used you to test that koichifier
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Hmm, well I seriously started learning at the end of 2015. Shortly after that, I joined this site!
I started because of a light novel character called Natsukawa Masuzu. I adored her character, but the translation project for the light novel she was in got dropped. I wanted more, so I decided to learn japanese so I could read it on my own and never have to deal with waiting for translators ever again.
Its allowed me to meet some wonderful people~
The community mentality and the trust shared within that community. Its crazy how much japanese people are able to trust each other (even complete strangers), and never have that trust betrayed.
Reading visual novels! I love playing them and its so satisfying being able to understand whats going on.
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TBH I want to marry vanilla
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No, no no, Vanilla is the one with the anime girl profile. I was only pretending to be Vanilla last month. It’s an easy mistake.
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November 11, 2017.
Last summer, I decided to watch anime again and one of the 1st ones I saw was Sword Art Online. Without offering too many boring details, that anime made me cry like no other piece of art ever did before, so after the finale of season 2, I scoured the Internet for the light novels because I wanted more of my babies, Kirito and Asuna. I found everything that had been translated, but the English was so shit it slowly gave birth to the desire to learn Japanese and read those light novels without constantly pausing to correct sentences from a grammatical standpoint in my head. Following anime only reinforced said desire and in October, I found Tofugu, which helped me learn hiragana and katakana and also directed me to WaniKani.
I mean, I love this platform, the way the system functions, and the community, the chance to talk to people like you on threads like this, but I also love the very prospect of understanding a little bit of the language itself now and the fact that I can kinda brag to friends, acquaintances and strangers about it, hehehe.
Manga and anime, hands down.
I can’t do very much at all for now, but sometimes I type to people in Japanese and that makes me feel good.
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I started in August '17
I have always had a background interest in Japan - but going was never really something that crossed my mind as a possibility. But then last April i went for about as month - and it blew my mind ! I just find the culture and history fascinating.
Some people have a very tangible reason for liking Japan - be that anime, manga, or food ect - i sometimes find it more difficult to explain.
I love the Japanese attitude to life - that no matter what you do, whether you are an artist, or a street cleaner, you should do your very best, and take care over it.
I love their connection with nature and spiritualism - the belief that you should respect the environment (perhaps linked to Buddhism and Shinto), and others ! in Japan it seems the general mentality is that whatever you do you should be mindful of how it will impact on others. In the UK there seems to be a attitude that as long as people get what they want, screw everyone else, and it genuinely saddens me. (note - i’m aware that there are plenty of great people and communities in the UK as well). They seem to have a social cohesion which is almost unimaginable where i live.
On a more tangible and less serious note - I BLOODY LOVE GHIBLI !! haha
thanks for sharing @Jim123bcb 
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Thank you for sharing, I also like SAO
Great story, I agree with you about Japanese people’s attitude in life!
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I began to study Japanese in 2015, I think (at least my oldest Anki cards are from 2015).
Unfortunately I took a really long break due to life circumstances, but I picked up studying again in 2016 and now I’m back on track!
I can’t remember what exactly made me go from “It would be cool if I was able to speak it” to “I am definitely going to study it, no more excuses!” back then. Besides wanting to read manga and doujinshi I think it was due to multiple factors like stumbling across WaniKani and finding good ressources for self-studying in general that made my wish/dream seem much more feasible compared to several years ago when I thought it was impossible to learn Japanese without proper classes/teachers.
At the moment my reasons are:
- Being able to read/watch/listen to Japanese media
- Communicating with Japanese artists that I admire
- Proving to myself that I can do it
- I’ve already come so far and I would feel awful if I stopped now…
My favorite thing about studying Japanese is coming across vocabulary words that I just learned in “the wild”, like in a game or whatever. It feels so rewarding and makes the word stick even better and it feels so good to have understood something, even if I didn’t understand the entire sentence.
Also leveling up in WaniKani feels nice too.
My favorite part about the culture is… I don’t know, I feel like I can’t have a proper opinion because I haven’t experienced much of the culture myself since I haven’t been in Japan yet. So I’ll go with food for now!
The thing that’s the most fun to do for me is definitely reading and speaking. I read aloud very often and talk to myself when no one’s around. I can experiment with conveying emotions when I read a character’s dialogue in a game for example and it’s great fun.
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This really resonates with me. I started studying Japanese more seriously in July 2017. One weekend on a whim, I learned hiragana and katakana - this totally got me hooked and interested in learning more! I could suddenly recognize (very) simple vocab words and loanwords, which were just meaningless symbols to me a few days prior.
I also enjoy Japanese from an aesthetic standpoint - I love the sound and rhythm of the language.
I probably have the most fun reading or watching anime. Being able to understand even a tiny bit of Japanese has helped me enjoy my favorite shows even more
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Bookmarking this thread so I can come back to read through and answer it later when I have more time
We’re already married though. Although his Chinese is pretty bad. Even as a dog, my Chinese is better.
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I started learning Japanese in late 2012.
I originally wanted to be able to play games in their original language. Now I want to be able to understand many different forms of media. I also went to Japan and want to go back. So, of course, knowing Japanese will help.
My favorite thing? The people here and it not being like European languages.
I love how people can just let their children wander the mall while they shop. That totally shocked my when I was there. It was so safe! Too safe.
I like being able to understand the Japanese, read the subtitle, and say “they didn’t say that!” Stupid localization.
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I tried to learn Japanese in the summer of 2016, and never got pass hiragana. I didn’t lose my interest, I just couldn’t afford the resources at the time. Now I made it my New Years resolution and have been going strong. My interest in Japan started with my love of retro gaming, which led me to the Famicom (Japanese NES). I now have came to love the samurai philosophy of bushido code. I think there is a lot to be learned from the samurai and zen monks. I also like the Japanese sense of perfection, and self discipline. I also find Japanese to be a beautiful language, especially written. Also I always wanted to be bilingual ever sinse I can remember, I wanted to challenge myself, so I chose to learn Japanese.
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I grew up raised by a single mom, and when she was at work I was babysat by our Japanese mother. I became very close to her and her two daughters and I was virtually raised in a Japanese environment. For me, Japanese is both a complicated problem to solve, as well as a piece of my childhood and a way to connect to my “second family”. As I dive deeper into the language, it only intrigues me more and gives me flashbacks of when I was younger!
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“When you started learning Japanese?”
August 4th, 2017 at about 11:30pm.
“Why you wanted to study Japanese?”
Funny story (not really). A friend in a friend group (5 people) decided “Hey, we should learn Japanese!” and then I decided to roll along with it (considering it was something I wanted to do anyway). The original friend dropped out after 3 days and I may have tried to bug them a bit but they didn’t drop back in so I gave up. Of the five of us, one person (the person who started the whole thing) dropped out, two never really bothered starting, and one is actually still doing this scrud. And using WaniKani. And they’re on WaniKani. You know who you are.
“What is your favorite thing about studying Japanese?”
Gradually understanding stuff more and more, I guess? I guess it kind of goes with all languages, but actually being able to comprehend stuff is fun.
“What’s your favorite part about Japanese Culture?”
Uhh… video games? Honestly, I really don’t care for “beautiful pictures of flowers that may have been fluttering around photobucket since 2009”, I just want to play video games, man.
“What do you have the most fun doing in Japanese?”
Learning, I guess? Considering I’m still around pre-N5 level, there’s not much… fun I can really have. Though the most fun thing I did recently was reading the story about bamboo hats in the 10th chapter of Genki and thinking “Wow, I can… comprehend… things.”
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