Not gonna lie, initially my motivation came from my interest in popular culture - essentially anime, but also manga, J-pop, J-rock, etc. After being settled in Japan and starting a family (and even just before that), I came to realize that I would need at least more kanji knowledge so I wouldn’t have to keep relying on my husband all the time (and embarrass my future children).
Click here for a *really long* backstory
This started back in junior high school when I learned that some of my favorite shows like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, were originally from Japan. At this point, I had kind of given up on the American version of Pokemon because the show seemed to change too much (i.e. Hoenn generation), but then interest started picking up again when some really dedicated older fans would get RAW copies of the Japanese versions and upload them on MegaUpload, etc. for fellow fans. Somehow, watching the show in Japanese made it a different experience and I came to appreciate the Japanese version separately from the dub that I grew up with.
The anime boom in the states happened when I was in about high school/university when anime conventions were starting to take off. I remember when it was still a small thing in Anaheim and then it blew up and had to move it to Los Angeles. No idea what it’s like now, but I imagine it’s gotten bigger. It sounds like Southern California at least has a lot more access to Japanese goods from Daiso and Kinokuniya. You guys living there are lucky now! I remember it being a big deal when I spotted this hole in the wall anime store literally called “Anime Nuts.” I spent all my birthday and Christmas money on manga and DVDs. Remember accidentally buying a boys love manga (had no idea at the time, the cover just looked pretty lol) and getting a stare from the owner (probably thinking whether he should ask to show my ID or not, but I came in there nearly all the time so he didn’t say anything. Anyway, there was some graphic scenes haha).
But shortly after getting into the pop culture side of things, we started learning about Japan via world history classes, and I started getting interested in everything related to Japan. I’m sure everyone has at some point, but the Edo era became fascinating to me. My dad had picked up a novel on the Sano Ichiro series (about a detective working for the shogun during the Edo period and gradually making his way up the ranks) by Laura Joh Rowland, and I started reading that and got more interested in that period and the culture side of things. I thought that traditional side of Japan was “like totally cool y’know” and started disconnecting from the pop culture side of things besides Pokemon and a few other long time favorite series.
During this time, I started gaining an interest in actually learning the language. Thankfully, I had the worst trouble in calculus, and my dad signed me up for tutoring at Kumon and found out they taught Japanese too. Knowing how interested I was, my dad signed me up for that too and began by learning the basic writing system and vocab. Since it’s more designed towards helping native speakers with writing characters and reading, I didn’t officially learn grammar until I took classes in university.
I majored in English, had history and Japanese as minors at one point, but dropped them when I realized I had to put more effort in English more than anything if I wanted to be an English professor. Otherwise, I took Japanese classes for 3 years, and from my second year until my 4th year, I also helped my Japanese professor as a TA in her classes and that really helped cement my learning (nothing helps you learn something more than when you can teach the content to another person).
3 year skip over my grad school days until I decided to quit and try teaching in Japan. Honestly, I wanted to study abroad as an undergrad, but my dream job took priority so I couldn’t afford to take that year off from English classes. When I decided to try teaching, I remembered my professor recommending the JET program but looking into it, I realized it’s more of a short term stay, and if I really enjoyed my stay in Japan like I thought I would, I would be in the situation of trying to jump into a new job before my contract ended, so I went with a company instead and studied a bit more to brush up on my 3 year hiatus from Japanese.
During that time, I lived in the countryside in Tochigi, and it was a very foreigner friendly city because they had a sister city and an exchange program with a city in Austria. I learned a lot of the language just from interacting with Japanese people, and then I got too used to my situation. I had just enough knowledge to do whatever I needed to do - could communicate with my nihonbuyo and kyudo senseis, go to the hospital, get a haircut, even cancel my utilities with the knowledge I had so I never pushed myself to move forward. Looking back, I was actually getting really frustrated with myself in my 3rd year because I knew I got to the point where I stopped growing.
Then I met my husband on the other side of Japan in Hiroshima. I remember one of my biggest frustrated moments was when I came to Hiroshima to help out at the disaster center (there was a terrible flood that wiped out a lot of areas and even did major damage in Hiroshima City), and I started doubting myself after reading several articles about how foreigners assisted in these disaster groups, but they didn’t have enough Japanese so they sometimes became a hindrance. And I thought, oh no, what if this is a bad idea? Maybe I should stop so I don’t get in the way… but then someone (my now husband) reassured me that my Japanese was just fine, and he helped me fine the best volunteer center to help out at, and that was one of my most eye-opening experiences. Everyone was friendly and amazed that a foreigner was there visiting from another prefecture, no less, to help out. And that gradually got my confidence back.
Around that time too, I signed up for WaniKani, but it was going “too slow” and I didn’t understand how it really worked so I gave up after about a week. After I started living with my then partner, now husband, I gradually started realizing how many foreigners living in Japan put in a lot more effort in studying Japanese than I did and it showed, especially the ones from Asian countries like Vietnam, Bangladash, Myanmar, etc. They aren’t lucky like me in that they’re not native English speakers, so they don’t have the opportunity to get an easy English teaching ALT job where (let’s face it) most of us don’t really need to put in that much effort to get a comfy paycheck.
They literally work in Japan because the yen is worth more than their country’s currency, and so they’re willing to wake up at the crack of dawn and do backbreaking work that most of us from western countries aren’t willing to do, and in order to do the work well, they need to communicate in Japanese, so they’re making time in their already busy schedule to study because they need it for their livelihood and their families’ that they’re supporting. Looking at it that way, it made me feel privileged but super appreciative that I really had the choice to come to Japan and enjoy the choice that I made because I really took it for granted before.
Coupled with the realization that my husband is Japanese, and we were planning on starting a family down the road, I knew I needed to polish my knowledge a lot more if I wanted to serve as a good model for our kids as well as be able to communicate in certain spaces like at school. I know bullying can be a really bad problem, particularly for “hafu” so I knew that if I were the mother who spoke weird Japanese, that could be a potential target for bullying if our kid copied me.
So with that realization, I started cracking open a textbook here and there, but that method of study didn’t really stick for me. I needed to be in a classroom setting with an instructor to guide me and tell me what to do, give me homework at least. It was only when I saw a friend’s tweet about being able to finally afford the lifetime sale and purchasing it as a Christmas present to herself that I remembered that WK site that all the cool kids were using.
And I can tell you that thanks to the SRS program they set up and the support from the comm to help stay accountable, I could finally learn to study on my own, except it doesn’t really feel like it because everyone else is here too! Plus, I try to think of it less of studying and more of playing a game and trying to reach goals (and thankfully, WK makes it feel like that).
Anyway, I’ve taught myself katakana and hiragana over the past week or so and am just now getting into the slightly more complicated stuff, (although I’m sure it will get MUCH more complicated down the line), and I am very excited as to how my language journey will end up!
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). and naturally through watching so much stuff I ended up learning japanese without trying (well to an extend) and after some years I tried to be a bit more serious about it. I think at least after my first trip to Japan (2013?