What made you start Japanese?

Japanese Language
#70

Perhaps off topic haha. But I have a very typical assistant English language teaching job through the JET program. Will end my contract in 2019 because I want to try new things :slight_smile: And I like it well enough. I live in a tiny town in the countryside, so my experience will be a lot different than those in the city.

It’s interesting how my goals and motivations have changed over the years. Anime was a big motivation to learn the language when I first started out but since moving here, I’ve actually been watching it less and I’m more inclined to study to get a job. I’m such a boring adult now XD

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#71

So, just starting this off with the fact that I am REALLY into the Tales Series. Like, it’s my favorite video game series of all time. The characters are enjoyable and I’ve just always really enjoyed the style, the gameplay (with a few exceptions) and stories.

Now, if you’re a fan of this series, you know that their localization team is…REALLY bad. They hardly ever advertise their games, a lot of the mothership titles were never brought over because the director (I think) mentioned he didn’t want 2D styled games localized in the west because he believed they would do poorly, not to mention, with the exception of maybe one handheld spinoff and two mobiles (which both english servers were taken down this year), we never get any of the side games. It’s just overall an absolute train wreck.

So, finally being fed up with Bandai Namco’s unwillingness to offer but the bare minimum (if even that) to their fans outside of Japan, I figured I’d take a crack at learning Japanese not only for myself, but maybe so I can finally get some of the side games translated for people (since some of the main titles have or are going to be translated).

So, tl;dr version, it’s sort of a mixture of spite towards a company, love towards a series and a desire to broaden my horizons.

Not to mention, it would be nice to play other games that never got localized or fan translations. Dating sims/otome games, in particular, don’t seem to do well in the west, so we rarely get those.

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#72

You know what? I’ve always found JAL serving ice cream kinda odd given how many of us Asians are to some degree lactose intolerant.

#73

Lol thanks Ninja re bang bang is really the only song I like of her because I just watched the music video of PONPONPON and I’m so confused.

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Like can anyone even explain what is happening here

#74

According to Wikipedia,
The music video for “PonPonPon” was shot by Jun Tamukai. The theme of the music video is “kawaii”, which means cute in Japanese. Tamukai regarded Kyary as a person bending the definition of “kawaii” by mixing it with weirdness. The art director Masuda Sebastian, of fashion brand 6%DOKIDOKI, adopted the randomness of “a room of a girl who isn’t good at tidying up”, adding “a taste of the 60-70s”. The fashion stylist and designer for the video was Kumiko Iijima.

Kawaisa and Decora culture are prevalent in the “PonPonPon” video.
The video is a mix of 2D and 3D animation. It depicts two worlds, the first of which was created by Masuda Sebastian and looks like a room of a girl; the other is her own mental world, where her face is pink-colored. The video starts with a microphone stand coming out of Kyary’s ear. The microphone stand is used to imitate the image of Freddie Mercury. In the chorus, Kyary performs a dance choreographed by air: man with the lyrics inserted as kinetic typography. When Kyary claps during the bridge, slices of bread appear because “pan” is the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of a clap, as well as the word for bread. A combo television unit into which a cassette is inserted is a reference to the fact that analog broadcasting stopped in Japan and was switched to digital broadcasting on July 20, the same day the song was released on iTunes Store. Kyary parodies the “Hige dance” from the 70s comedy show 8 Ji Dayo! Zenin Shugo wearing a mustache and does the “Kamehameha” move from the Japanese manga series Dragon Ball.

#75

I always wanted to be bilingual so I studied Spanish and French through high school and college and absolutely nothing stuck. I had given up on learning another language until, three years ago, my brother decided he was too old for toys and whatnot so he gave me his Naruto things.
I picked up the manga and I was very dissatisfied with the translation and wondered what it was like in the original language. I think I found Tofugu the very next day and I never looked back.

#76

Um … I used to play Final Fantasy XI Online, which has bilingual servers and a lot of material only available in Japanese, including books on learning English while playing the game!

It has an auto-translate function that lets you carry on simple conversations with people, and I did my best to help others and get to know them. I even started learning the language back then …

Now I’m on Twitter and Pixiv, and a lot of people speak only Japanese? And I want to be able to encourage them, participate in conversations, and read and write web novels / light novels …

Basically all of the media that’s meaningful to me is either Japanese or heavily inspired by Japanese media, and much of it isn’t translated, and I don’t want to read fan translations if I can help it …

I feel less like I’m leaning a second language as a fun hobby, and more like I’m illiterate and can’t fully participate in the community, or communicate with other people. And I feel ashamed of it, but I do my best in spite of that.

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#77

Oh :joy::joy: thanks

#78

Anytime, 私の愛! jk lol i don’t even know who you are

#79

Lol same my friend

#80

I am a lay ordained Zen Buddhist, and after years of studying zen writings translated by others, I started to really want to read what members of my Dharma family have written in their own words.

I’m also really excited about learning a language that is so different from my own. I’ve already learned French and Spanish, which arose from the same root language. Japanese is a totally different and fascinating experience.

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#81

Have you been to Aselia Con in Dallas by any chance? I know someone who performs there with his daughter every year. They love the Tales series and play the songs as guitar duets.

#82

I haven’t, but I’ve certainly heard of it. It’s a shame because I live in Illinois, so it’s quite a bit of traveling and considering I’m not very familiar with Texas or really know anyone, I’d probably be a little too uncomfortable to go by myself. Perhaps someday though.

That aside, that’s really awesome they do performances there. =)

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#83

I’ve been on and off with Japanese for most of my life. My two best friends in primary school were both children of Japanese immigrants and because my parents both worked I spent a lot of time with their parents. As much as it’s not my culture by blood, I think that having most of my experience from a young age in a community setting being a Japanese community setting shaped what I found homely. I first started learning Japanese formally (i.e. not just picking up a few words and phrases my friends and their parents taught me) in grade 6, but I dropped it part way through grade 8 since starting secondary I went to a different school than my previous friends and I was in a new friend group that left me away from the Japanese community. It began to be offered in my high school in grade 11 so I decided to pick it back up again, but only as an audit class during my free block, and not as a graded course. I just finished my first year of university and because it was in a community far less diverse (more white) than where I grew up, I noticed that a lot of the things I missed about home were from my Japanese friends and their traditions, so over the summer I decided to start working on Japanese again, mostly trying to regain some of what I lost, and see if it can provide a window to a place where I can feel more at home.

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#84

pokemon pretty much, fav game series of all time and the influence of japanese culture in the games are admirable.

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#85

I have been to Japan and I found people are really great at each other, so helpful, well disciplined. I think they have found a really good way to life. After returning from Japan, I just really got interested to know more about them being so distinctive and their unconditional contribution towards nation. Then I started learning Japanese to know them better, to get connected and of course to be there soon again for a long time :slight_smile:

Cheers…!!

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#86

Honestly just wanted to see if I could because it looked difficult. I was able to recognize the character の from a video and wanted to see if I could learn any other characters. Learned hiragana and katakana on my own using the internet, then found classes at my school. I was never interested in anime or anything before learning Japanese.

It was a big difference for me because I never had to make flash cards or study when I learned Spanish… I was also taking my senior-level college Spanish courses while taking beginning Japanese courses so sometimes the languages would mix together lol! Called it Spanese.

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#87

I was always fascinated by anime, manga, light novel and such, but the reason for starting to learn Japanese, was the lack of translation of some novel, I was interested in.

For example the visual novel called: Mahōtsukai no Yoru (a type-moon VN) and the light novel Yuusha, Aruiwa Bakemono to Yobareta Shoujo (from the author of The Girl Who Ate a Death God , The Girl Who Bore the Flame Ring and such).

It might sound silly, but when somebody wrote on a bulletin board, that he is going to learn Japanese faster than the translation progresses, to which many of the users positively replied to,
I mindlessly thought (it happens)- I can do that too!

I initially wanted a second foreign language to my humble English and ended up trying Italian, french and Russian, which all kind of are boring, I guess. At the end Japanese provided enough “peculiarness” that my interest did not cease and it added value because of my hobbies.

In addition to that I already bought some quite advanced light novel in Japanese, I look forward to read to, so there is literally no escape ;D

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#88

I really wanted to read White Album 2

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#89

I had learned some German in school, which aside from some grammar quirks, is fairly easy for English speakers to grasp. I’d always been really interested in Japan and its culture, and not to mention the language is considered one of the hardest for English speakers to learn. One morning I literally said to myself “why not”, and here I am.

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