Tell me your WHY!

ReJi00 · January 7, 2018, 2:28pm

Why are you studying Japanese? What sparked your interest? What motivates you? What are your goals? Tell me your WHY

I fell in love with Japanese in high school while reading manga, and later through watching anime. I will confess, I thought my boyfriend (now husband) was such a nerd for anime and I thought anime was so weird Jokes on me, anime is so awesome.

I began studying Japanese in college and really wanted to study abroad. My school had a program to go to Kyoto or Tokyo, but sadly, the school got bought out and reformed and I ended up dropping out and getting married.

Now, I study with Genki and WK some 15 years later. My why is that I love the language, and it makes me happy. I don’t know what I’ll actually DO with it, like professionally, but I am looking forward to reading native literature and understanding anime and j-dramas subtitle free. I also would love to teach my 3 kids and then speak with them, but that feels really daunting. I have no idea how to teach this language to my little kiddos.

So, how about you?

charlesfm · January 7, 2018, 2:35pm

I first found out about Japanese through anime (specifically Soul Eater) and I was obsessed within an hour.
I guess I’ve always had weird interests, but something about the language is just so intricate and fascinating. I want to study in Japan someday and maybe even move there permanently
I’m reaching a point where I can watch media and understand ~95% of it and trust me it’s worth every second of studying. ファイト！！

ReJi00 · January 7, 2018, 2:37pm

ohh my gosh, that’s awesome! And inspiring, thank you

Vanilla · January 7, 2018, 2:38pm

Unfortunately its not a Wednesday so @jprspereira still wont be able to find out.

Ive always wanted to move to Beijing and I figured I should probably figure out how to speak the language first. Weeaboo culture also played a heavy part.

Toyger · January 7, 2018, 2:46pm

My brother brought me his laptop, sat it down in front of me and said "Watch this, I think you’ll like it"
It was Naruto, and I saw ALL episodes in just a few days!!! Well, when I say all, this was when there was only 133 episodes yet
I was hooked, both on the show and the language. There’s something magical about it, just, can’t explain it.
What will I use it for? Reading mostly. If I ever get to achieve my l´dream of visiting I’ll probably be too shy to use it much (again, being able to read is a great help though ). My listening skills are still low enough so I have to use subtitles, but get a joy when I recognise specific words that I learned more recently =)
I’m currently in the book club here in the forums, and though it’s a challenge by far I do love it, reading along and see just what I can understand of it =)

jzoli · January 7, 2018, 2:48pm

I think it’s safe to say that like many people here, I also got introduced to Japanese through anime. That was roughly 1.5-2 years ago. But roughly about 3-6 months ago, I completely stopped doing both Japanese and stopped watching anime to be able to concentrate on university. (I didn’t know what to expect, so I thought I should just focus solely on uni for that time) Now that I know how university is, I picked it up again after reading Koichi’s email we got a few days after new year’s. So now I’m going at it again, but now with 100% more enthusiasm, and a solid goal. Though I still don’t watch anime I started made in abyss though

sigolino · January 7, 2018, 2:50pm

Because I’m obsessed. By this point, I doubt I could stop even if I wanted to.

charlesfm · January 7, 2018, 2:51pm

How is made in abyss? I’m deciding whether or not to watch it

jzoli · January 7, 2018, 2:55pm

I only watched the first episode, but so far it looks really good. My friends who were nagging me to start are saying it’s probably anime of the year.

Oh, I also watched the first episode of pop team epic yesterday and even though it’s not really my cup of tea, it wasn’t bad.

justine · January 7, 2018, 3:01pm

I learnt Japanese at high school for four years, but I really only came away with about five polite phrases and knowing the hiragana and katakana, and maybe a handful of kanji (numbers, colours and that’s about all).
I love Japan, have only visited once, but I really enjoy Ghibli movies. I’ve not been brave enough to read manga yet as my Japanese is not that good, but I will get there.
I also enjoy how my brain feels learning languages, I speak two fluently and another two more simply.
Japanese is one of these, but I got by politely in Japan and managed to get to where I wanted to be and got food and shelter

charlesfm · January 7, 2018, 3:01pm

I watched the first 16 minutes of it and then I couldn’t take it anymore.
It was funny and all but waaaay too fast paced (I guess that’s part of the humor?) and some of the humor went right over my head.
I could see how people would like it though.

Danmonkey · January 7, 2018, 3:04pm

Well… good luck. I’ve heard the dialect there is awfully hard to understand, even for native Japanese speakers.

jzoli · January 7, 2018, 3:05pm

But… I only realised it by making the mistake. Apparently it’s like: you can choose your own voice? So the first half of pop team epic is the same as the second half, but with a different voice. There were a lot of references in it, a few I didn’t understand, but those were funny. The “default 4-koma” parts were just too crazy for me

kumosayi · January 7, 2018, 3:05pm

I’ve been meaning to learn Japanese for the past 10 or so years but never actually got around to it (mainly because of music / talk/idol shows). My recent interest in Keyakizaka46 made me serious about learning it to read their blogs and such.

DaisukeJigen · January 7, 2018, 3:09pm

Honestly started due to video games. Used to import lots of games (not anymore, damn adulthood and lack of money).
Now, while that would still be nice (as well as manga/movies/etc) its also just a challenge. Learning a second language is a nice life goal, self-improvement, self inflicted challenge, type deal.

jprspereira · January 7, 2018, 3:13pm

Hey mate, I thought it was because you wanted me to come with you to find our lovely wives. Guess I’ll try to remember to ask on Wednesday.

josephspoelstra · January 7, 2018, 3:21pm

A friend was gifted Rosetta stone for Japanese and I was gearing up to learn Spanish, and figured it would be easier to learn together than apart, so I joined him on Japanese. Plus, I was never going to be the best as Spanish in any room in Southern California. However, I can with Japanese. While studying, I have become more interested in language. I hope to know 3 or 4 foreign languages when all is said and done, but for now, I hope just to master this one.

Saruko · January 7, 2018, 3:35pm

OMG, are you me?!

If you substitute music/variety shows for anime in this quote, that’s exactly what I would say. (I’m still not into anime as much as my husband is.) And at 15 years out of college, it sounds like you and I must be about the same age, too.

How old are your kids? Mine are 11, 8, and almost 5. A while ago we had a thread about teaching your kids Japanese.

NicoleRauch · January 7, 2018, 3:56pm

My daughter (who is 19 now) has been a fan of Japan and Japanese for ages. When she seriously started to learn the language, she told me many interesting things about it, so eventually I got interested. I started learning the Kana and some vocabulary here and there. Last July my daughter took the JLPT N4 test, and it was fairly easy for her. So right after that test, I suggested she should take N3 in December. She said she’d do N3 if I’d do N5 at the same time.
Well, I thought, how card can it be? I am fluent in German and English, I get along in French, I had Latin at school, I know some Spanish, a tiny bit of Danish and Dutch, and I always thought that learning languages was easy. For me, grammar always was a no-brainer thanks to Latin. And for vocabulary, I just mixed Latin, English and German, shook it a little bit, and I was able to build a connection to that new word in that other language. With these comforting thoughts, I accepted the challenge of doing N5.

Well. I had never expected it would be THAT hard. I couldn’t make any of these weird words stick. karai, kirai, kirei, kurai, kuroi - all sounded the same to me. I tried this and that but did not really get anywhere. Finally, I picked up WaniKani and thanks to its mnemonics I got a grip on memorizing Japanese sound patterns. I studied like crazy, and in December I actually sat the N5! (I don’t think I passed, though, but that’s not really important.)

So, now I’m officially addicted.
In the far future, I’d like to be able to read a Haruki Murakami book in Japanese. Sometimes I think that I’d like to live in Japan for a while, but I don’t have real plans about that so far.

gojarappe · January 7, 2018, 4:06pm

To speak to my grandparents who I didn’t grow up with, mostly. I grew up speaking other languages from the paternal side of my family and Japanese was always something that had to be put on the back burner.

Edit: I also forgot to mention that I now live in Japan and want to stay here until the foreseeable future so having the ability to make friends and increase my employment options is necessary.