I wanted to learn Japanese early in life (high school) but I was always told it was way too hard. I love the culture, I enjoy anime & manga, it’s my #1 favorite food, and I love the country. I decided to pick it up as an alternate/3rd language since I’m getting close to fluent in Spanish. I find it doesn’t interact with Spanish at all, so it’s a nice new way of learning.
I’m hoping to be anime fluent in 1.5 years and business fluent in 2 years.
to learn a different language other than the usual English and Spanish that is really common nowadays and have a differentiation if related to any kind of work I can possibily get in the future.
Also, I dont like “messengers”, I prefer to go to the source and get the information or media by myself. Today I watch tv shows and movies with English subttles, I am fluent, before I got to know the language I relied on people to make/translate horribly subtitles to my native language and it took forever to make the subtitles available.
Same with Japanese, besides these all known popular manga, there are many nontranslated to English, specially manga style gekiga, I wish to immerse in them when I can become somehow fluent in reading at least.
There are 77 detective novels of Seishi Yokomizo and only 4 of those are translated into English. At the moment they are translating one book a year. If they continue at this rate, I am dead before they finish translating them all. So I took the matter into my own hands. I have a long way ahead of me since I started only a month ago.
Haven’t seen this as a reason yet, so thought I’d post it.
My brother and I are into pro wrestling and would love to travel to Tokyo and watch Wrestle Kingdom when things are back to normal with the covid situation in Japan.
I’ve also been severely depressed for close to ten years now and have been unable to work. I feel like I’m close to getting better with the help of therapy and friends, so I’m using learning Japanese to try and find something I could be good at. Maybe give me a sense of achievement if I ever become fluent.
I gotta ask… what would you have done differently to learn more of the language while you were living in Japan?
I’m going to be moving to Japan myself in a few months (with a primary goal of becoming proficient with the language) and it’s somewhat terrifying to think that people can live in the country for years at a time without picking it up. Any tips for me to make the most of my time there?
Y-you’re fun and interesting! I certainly think so! :3
you’re not the only one interested in pro wrestling, there’s even a thread about it!
The initial response is that my long-term goal is to move to, live in, and conduct business in Japan. This is a result of my extensive social network there, which was a result from my profound appreciation for shochu and Japanese drinking culture (among many other interests like Japanese music and literature).
As time has gone on though, I realize there is something incredibly deep and elegant about the language itself, and that keeps me motivated, even at times when WaniKani or my classes feel like drudgery leading nowhere, slowly. There is a structure and a doorway into other ways of thinking through the language that has only expanded my creativity and capacity for ideas. Its pretty exciting.
Thanks man! I’ll check it out
I love a couple Japanese bands, so I wanted to be able to understand them without needing to look up translations. After I got started I fell in love with the language itself and now I’m learning just because I love it (I still love Japanese music though). I’m not really into anime or manga, and I have no plans to move to Japan, which is what people usually assume when I say I’m studying Japanese.
I’m moving to Japan early next year, and at first I was never interested in Japanese culture or anime. Now I want to be immersed in their culture and be able to speak with the people there
For starters, I should have started on WK back then… even before I left actually. LOL. Seriously though, I did know about WK already since I had paid a lifetime membership to TextFugu (now defunct, but the material is still there). But in addition to that, I wish I was just more intentional about it.
One perfect example: I was actually invited to a Japanese study club during my first or second month in Japan. It was run by one of my English students at a Seniors class I taught and it was mostly Filipino women with Japanese husbands who were working on their JLPT exams so they could get a job there. It would have been the best opportunity for me since I’m Filipino-Canadian. I think they met 2 times a month and it would have only cost maybe 1000 yen to join them per meeting… But I dunno, I was too lazy to go out on a those Saturday mornings I guess… I watched Japanese anime with English subs instead. Haha.
One of the things I especially regret is not being able to use “learning Japanese” as a way to connect with my students more. I remember one of things I used to do to mess with the kids I taught was to purposely mispronounce Kanji… So I would like draw out 四月 then point to it and say to one of the kids… よんがつ？ or しつき？ They would flip out, trying to explain why I was wrong … haha, that joke never got old. Even if I was just at an elementary level it would have definitely help me bridge the culture gap much better.
Anyway… I barely studied. I didn’t participate in neighbourhood things that may have helped me improve. And just overall I wasn’t as attentive as I could have been. Sadly, 2 years wasted that I’m now trying to make up for.
I want to talk to my grandparents directly
To play video games!
When I was a kid in the 90s, I had a subscription to Nintendo Power. They had this column called the Epic Center that focused on JRPGs. Due to the relative paucity of JRPGs that were actually getting localized, the column gradually gave up and started showing Japanese titles just to show Americans what exists on the Super Famicom. I remember one month, they had an article called “Games You’ll Never Play.” In another, they had a gorgeous 2-page spread of Tales of Phantasia.
It didn’t actually occur to me to even try to use my Japanese for games until I was in college, but I ended up helping out on the fan translation of Live A Live back in the early aughts. I wasn’t very good back then, and that ended up being my only contribution to “the scene,” but I still have a sentimental attachment to that game (and I went really far out of my way to pick up the fancy-pants Japan-only special edition of the remake last month!).
I stopped for almost a decade, then I started working with a Japanese native speaker who hated my Japanese and eventually told me indirectly that I need to start studying it again. So I did! Now I can play video games and maybe need a dictionary once every… 2–3 minutes? I’m still slow and I still have a long way to go, but I’m proud of the work I’ve put in!
To fill the void.
I have a lot of the normie reasons for learning Japanese: I’m one of those people who just kind of enjoys learning languages, I have a lot of love for many anime/Japanese media series, I had a lot of spare time recently
But the thing that really pushed me to properly learn Japanese/look into how to learn Japanese (because until I looked for guidance I didn’t realise how many resources were out there outside of Duolingo and irl Japanese classes)
Was getting into vocaloid music back in 2020
It started with Pinnochio-P’s Apple Dot Com and before I knew it, the majority of my youtube recommended had become Japanese videos
Over time, I picked up on a lot of little language trivia/idioms/cultural tidbits but I wasn’t feeling like it was particularly to learn full Japanese.
A lot of people here seem to disparrage translations as being inferior to understanding a text in it’s native language and I get that but my time in the English community for Japanese vocaloid songs really has me appreciating the work that goes into a quality translation
(Like, if I ever get to be fluent in Japanese, will I still watch anime with subs/look for translations of things? Probably not. But that just means as a fluent Japanese speaker, I’m not the audience for such resources)
I digress… My interest in learning was kickstarted by getting into an even nicher community where I ended up frequently talking to a lot of fan translators who were helping to make a Japanese web series more accessible to a non-Japanese speaking audience for the purpose of theorisation and analysis
I’m a long ways off being able to translate stuff myself, but one day I hope to be like them some day because I think they’re really cool
and it’s been incredible learning Hiragana/katakana and some kanji and just seeing this world of Japanese go from entirely indecipherable to a potentially understandable thing
my mind has been blown and I want to keep chasing this high!
Sorry if this is too long winded for a simple story 
I plan on going to study manga illustration in a Japanese college in 2024. I need to get the JLPT-N2 by 2023 December so I’m burning my eyelashes learning japanese
As someone who reads in Japanese and has read both original and translated works:
Really, they aren’t all that different. I mean, they are different, but not like going from black and white to colored. It’s really not more vibrant or anything, and if anything the writing and dialogue just feels more smooth.
Realistically, I feel like 99% of learners will “lose out” on more by reading the original due to language comprehension issues than they will be reading the translation due to translation issues.
Not to discourage anyone from doing it, but it’s really not a big change.
Anyways, I initially started learning so I could read my favorite books in japanese since the translation project got dropped. I’ve well since accomplished that, so currently I’m just learning because I enjoy it and want to have more freedom to do/say whatever I want with no effort on the language front (I live in Japan).
It does sound impossible but the people who live in Japan for several years and never pick up anything beyond basic Japanese phrases are the ones who escape to their English bubble. It’s very easy to do that when you’re in the big city like say Tokyo or Osaka, or even Nagoya or even a much smaller city like Hiroshima has foreigner bubbles you can hide out in if you can’t handle the culture shock.
But the trick is to avoid going to the well known foreigner bar or café down the street and peek in to a place you’ve only seen Japanese people go in. I wouldn’t say never hang out with other foreigners because you need a little balance of both. Besides, some foreigners will have valuable information and connections if you meet the right people. You just don’t want to get caught in the pattern of escaping to the bar to complain in English to your buddies because you’ve heard nothing but Japanese all day (or less than perfect English if you’re teaching in schools).
If you’re not really an outgoing person, Japan is a good place to change. A lot of Japanese people have this image that foreigners are outgoing and will the one to approach them, so don’t feel bad if no one really talks to you at first in the workplace. It helps to tell them a little about yourself, your interests, hobbies, what part of Japanese culture you’re interested in. You never know! Someone might introduce you to their kyudo team or something!
I’m half-Japanese, but I am moving over to Japan at the end of next year to begin my process of ordaining as a Zen monk. I can speak Japanese decently, but I am required to understand reading & writing if I am wanting to ordain.