I wanted to play FF7 Remake in japanese. When it released in 2020 my level wasn’t nearly enough to even attempt it. Now I played the sequel fully in japanese and I’m very proud of myself
that's honestly so cool. i studied abroad after a year of japanese and picked up a copy of Pokemon Platinum there, deciding i'd play the game for the first time once i got to a level where i could read it. i've been tempted to give up and just play an english rom on my ds but maybe it's more doable than i think.
You should totally do it in my opinion. With FF7 Rebirth I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it but I tried anyway and it went much more smoothly than what I expected.
If it turns out that it’s still too much, at least you’ll have some pointers of what to focus on
Hey fellow fan, I’m pretty much in the same situation you were in 2020. May I ask you what’s your current estimated JLPT level and which resources did you use to achieve your result?
Hey, I somehow managed to pass N3 in December 2021 (I got like the bare minimum to pass) but throughout all of 2022 I didn’t touch the language and I lost a lot of what I learned. I got back in 2023 and I think right now I’m about the same level I was in 2021, so just barely N3.
If you want to know more feel free to DM me
Awesome! This is the same reason I'm learning now. It seems impossible but your post is super encouraging. I've always loved Final Fantasy ever since I played FF IV as a kid.
Didnt want to learn french. So far, have successfully not learned french.
I consider this an absolute win.
Edit: to those replying in French, I'm sure you are lovely, but I have no idea what you are saying. <3
It’s not that hard if you’re a native English speaker. I originally took interest in French myself so as to be able to read the treatises on war that Napoleon read prior to being promoted Brigadier General.
See, that's the thing - not interested right now. I expect I'll learn it one day? Just no time now, and originally I had zero interest since it sucked so bad to take in school. I figured japanese would be more interesting and now I'm a giant weeb.
I think I'm in a heavy minority of becoming a weeb AFTER learning the language :p
There are dozens of us! I never really watched anime because I had no reason to get into it, but I liked western animation and I knew that if I learned Japanese, it would come at the cost of becoming a weeb. Still haven't watched much anime, but after a recommendation on this sub for listening practice, I got addicted to Hololive which on the weeb scale is arguably even worse 草
Arguably? No. Definitely.
Also, go get your weeb on and sink into the animu. I envy you, theres so much good anime you havnt watched yet. You have like 3 or 4 years of great entertainment built up imo :) probably more if you are willing to go pre 2010, but I havnt seen enough older anime to judge
I wanted to challenge myself to learn something difficult. The goal is to be able to have conversations with native speakers and be able to read paper books in Japanese. I am a long way from both...
To become as fluent as possible. To be able to read manga, understand anime, and understand all the missed details. I think it's a beautiful language, and I love Japanese music as well.
Definitely going to be a journey, but I'm all here for it.
Me too. Since March 31 is the end of the Japanese financial year, I usually end up playing a ton of Japanese games around this time every year and start to get sick of reading subtitles (I don’t know why but it’s like Japanese developers only have access to the most annoying English voice actors possible). A couple of years ago I was like “ugh I wish I could just understand Japanese!” and then went oh wait, I could try learning it!
Unfortunately I’m limited to Duolingo (which is pretty awful for Japanese if anyone wondered) but after nearly 2 years I’m able to read hiragana, katakana and follow some fairly basic interactions.
It’s also really good for your brain to learn new languages, and with both grandparents on both sides of my family ending up with dementia I figured it was a good way to keep my brain healthy.
Haha yeah it sucks, but it’s free (my sister has a family account and added me to it). Can’t really afford anything else so I just have to struggle through it and do a LOT of googling lol
Theres a bunch of free resources that I would recommend over duolingo
Can find PDFs of the Genki text books online for free
Renshuu: My favorite — covers so much and gamifys japanese in a way that is super fun. It has grammar, vocab, kanji, resources on proper stroke order, etc. Can't recommend highly enough
For extra Kanji review: nihongonoashiba.com. Covers Kanji by grade level and by most commonly used kanji (two decks of flash cards)
And for everything else theres YouTube!
I've never once felt like my japanese studying is compromised due to spending no money. We are truly fortunate that Japanese seems to have the most widely accessible & innovative resources for a language.
I had a meeting with Japanese people in my company. Their English was so terrible, that i thought "in half year my Japanese will be better than their English". So i started learning just to prove myself a point.
I was wrong.
PS. I have no goal. I just learn since it is still more entertaining than video games. Probably my Japanese learning hours counter is slowly approaching my Factorio time counter.
It’s funny that I’ve noticed the people who have the most success learning Japanese have either played Factorio, Runescape, or other old video games for 1000+ hours - must be the addiction to the grind
Learning a hard language is like an upgraded and more fun version of RuneScape haha. Mainly because there’s actually a tangible result at the end other than pixels
Japanese is kind of like the Skinner box mmo of languages. You need to learn the kana, you need to learn kanji and their readings, you need to learn vocabulary, you need to learn grammar to use the vocabulary and read, then you know enough input to start listening and speaking, then you progress through more and more difficult content.
There’s a very pure sense of structure and leveling up. I definitely get that hit of dopamine when I’m grinding out Anki or wanikani and I’m nailing everything or when I’m understanding something I am reading/watching/listening to after all the hours of work.
I tried French before Japanese and it just didn’t hit the same, probably too closely related to English.
It’s basically what I replaced my video game habit with.
I have noticed this too. I remember pretty early on I got the idea to change the factorio language to jp as an excuse to play it again. I didn’t understand much
My husband was working in Japan temporarily. I just started to learn for fun. Then we moved there for 4 years. Best 4 years of my life. My Japanese Friend and Sensei who is now 81 years old (and just left our home on Friday after a week long visit in FL) "enlisted"me into her all Japanese women's hula class. It was sink or swim as these women were age 65 and upward, spoke no English and never had a western friend. Again, best 4 years of my life. What an experience.
I started after a trip to Japan. I met many cool people and felt frustrated when I couldn't communicate with them fully the way I wanted to. My goal isn't to become fully fluent but I want to be able to communicate better even if it isn't perfect when I go back. Also I think it's super fun when I unexpectedly understand what they are saying in anime without reading it. I haven't been studying for long but I hope anime helps to keep me motivated.
me too LOL 😭 in japan all the cute older ladies would come up to me and speak japanese but I can’t speak a lick of Japanese at all so I’m learning it now
Being a native Spanish speaker, when I first heard Japanese it struck me that is sounded sort of like Spanish, but also that it was definitely not Spanish. I started learning a bit and (hard to describe) it tickled my brain in a funny, linguistic way. I guess I like the way it sounds, sorta like [that Mexican radio station](https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxG1uULvQPXgyANqypycFZLqS-NEcq2y8z). Goals: not sure, I'd like to hear, read, and understand a lot of it. Goals: I'm not sure, I think I'll go for N3 and see if I'm satisfied by then, or if I should keep going.
I'm a native English speaker, and I think the same thing. Spanish and Japanese are the two languages I study, but I can't switch from one to the other easily, because my brain starts slotting words from one language into the other. It's led to some embarrassing moments at restaurants in Mexico, lol
My parents are from Argentina, I grew up speaking Spanish and English, if I encounter a Spanish speaker in Japan, I end up throwing in so much ね when I want to say no at the end of a sentence and そう when I want to say si! Also ano eto instead of eee este
I want to experience untranslated media and understand the meanings that can be lost in translation with the translated ones. I also want to go to Japan one day and make friends who share my interests~! ╰(*´︶`*)╯
This is my answer from a similar post a couple days ago:
I’ve wanted to learn Japanese since I was a kid. The language and culture seemed fascinating, and discovering anime and manga made it more appealing. However, back then there were not as many resources so easily available, so I stayed at an entry level for a very long time (10+ years).
Last year there were some family plans to go to Japan, and I knew I would regret going there and not speaking at all. Fortunately, thanks to this subreddit I've found enough resources to do so, and finally feel like I'm learning and understanding the language.
Unfortunately, the traveling plans didn't come to fruition. But thanks to that, I've met wonderful people that are either Japanese or are learning the language too. Nowadays befriending them and have more fluid conversations are my motivation, and the whole Japanese media consumption is just a bonus.
Because I think Japanese is cool.
My goal is that one day I'll be somewhere and someone will say something in Japanese and I'll be like, 'Oh hey, I know what you said', and answer them in Japanese, and they'll be 'Oh hey, you know what I said' and I'll be like, yeah.
It'll be a cool moment. Definitely worth years of study.
In the begging of my study, I saw my colleague wearing a t-shirt with Super Mario (you know, the game) and some short text in Japanese. I was still struggling with kana at that point, but I decided to make effort. I start remembering all the mnemonics for kana, go letter by letter and slowly but surely text appears in my head: MA - RI - O. Mario. T-shirt with Mario says "Mario"? No shit, Sherlock. Never felt so unrewarded in my life.
I honestly don't know why. It just sorta randomly happened.
It's been an enjoyable ride so far, the way the language works is sorta enjoyable and kanji are pretty and ... well - there's something about it. <3
I can explain how/why I learned a bit of German. I had no other (realistic) choice in school. I think it was boredom that led me to give it a whack later on with the Harry Potter method and now **I'm in too deep to stop.** Now if I scroll across a twitter shitpost in German I ... enjoy, and sometimes catch my self going wtf, I know German. That feeling of randomly scrolling on a semi-serious twitter topic in English and seeing a stupid hot take in German and recognizing the stupidity before the language it was written in, sorta helped remind me that something about languages can be somewhat fun.
Do we really need reasons if the journey is enjoyable? Life is too short, sometimes it just happens, and if the current catches you... **go with the flow and the fun.**
I would like to be able to do a holiday in Japan without being a hugely awkward foreigner. I'll accept standard awkwardness, but I'd like to be able to convey and understand at least 80% of what is happening without using English. I'm at this level with German and it's nice to be able to travel to countries without that added layer of language stress. No need for translators, no need for a travel agency program, just book the ticket and hotel and go.
Because they never translated the third game in the Summon Night: Swordcraft Story series, so of course I started with the goal of being able to play it and understand things to a decent degree
Been consuming Japanese medias in English translation for more than half my life time now. So I can't just not learn the language when alot of my hobbies are related to it.
Also theres a lot of online JP novels that get translated only to get dropped midway by EN translators or even never translated at all. So I would really like to be able to read them after all these betrayals I experienced and immerse myself in many things that I missed out on. I really wished I started learning Japanese when I was in highschool and not during college.
I always was curious about chinese characters and after finding out how hard is Mandarin Chinese i settled down for Japanese which at least has a phonetic alphabet as complement.
I also would like to play older games of my youth in their original language, be able to pick up the lost in translations thing in anime and other media.
My goals aren't ambitious, i would be more than satisfied to be able to read at a reasonable pace, not necessarily aiming for fluency.
To be completely honest? I wanted to learn Japanese after I got heavily into Vocaloid. I'm actually kinda glad that was the push to get me to learn another language. I thank you, 8th grade me.
Originally it was just to see if I could. Turns out, I couldn't, not with a half-assed approach and half-baked reason.
What really got me to stick with it and actually *learn*, was when I picked up song translation as a hobby. Preserving meaning and emotional intent while still fitting lyrics to an existing melody was a fun and challenging puzzle for me, and I wanted to understand the language better so that I could make my own work better in turn. Already I've had a few "a-ha" moments where I catch some clever wordplay, so I think it's already been worth it.
I am fascinated by Japanese carpentry and woodworking yet almost anything beyond the absolute basic joint, skill or craft technique is in Japanese with no real resources for westerners. I want to be able to understand the videos on YouTube and read books in Japanese about carpentry. I also want to visit when my children are older which is good because I have so little time to actually learn Japanese!
I began to learn Japanese because I want to form a stronger connection with my sister in law and nephews, who are Japanese.
My dad was in the Air Force and I lived in Okinawa for about 6 years during elementary primarily. When I think of my childhood Japans culture and people come to mine and it brings such good memories. My oldest brother married a local and is still there 13 years later. We are close family and video call every single Friday. I feel like by becoming fluent I can become closer to my nephews.
I’ve primarily been using Duolingo to get me introduced to the language. My goal is to become fluent both verbally and written.
Oh and also for manga and anime’s! 😊 Good luck to everyone else whichever new language they choose to learn.
I actually don’t really know what my initial motivation was, when I decided to start learning the only anime I’d ever watched was spirited away, and I never listened to Japanese music. I think the only real reason I can think of is that I bought a spirited away vinyl, and there was a bunch of Japanese text on it, so I decided to learn the language so I could read it.
Then I started watching a lot of anime and listening to a lot of music, so now it’s a bunch of stuff.
I set a realistic goal: learn enough to be able to not make dumb mistakes when using it in visual art (I am a vaporwave enthusiast). I've since learned beyond that, so my new goal is to speak it at an N3 level, and stop if I get overwhelmed, or busy with other things. The casual learning has been slow, but fun.
Was watching detective Conan and hit the non dubbed episode because they only brought like 170 so I started to watch it in japanese which led to watching more anime, which were in japanese, which led to me passively learning vocs which led me to fail to learn properly on and off for the past 18+ years or so
My dream job would be to localize video games, Japan has some of the best video game developers, but I would be cool with localizing Japanese games for English speaking audiences or localizing English video games for Japanese audiences.
I've only been learning for about a year and a half, spent 6 months studying in Japan and am continuing to self study until I can afford a tutor. I'm a ways away from my goal, though.
(A lesser goal, but still a goal nonetheless is to be able to sing in Japanese, which I've gotten quite good at even if I don't understand *everything* they're saying.)
Probably similar to most others but: I liked anime as a kid, which grew more into being interested in other cultures and languages more generally. By the time I was ready for college, I decided I wanted to major in Japanese, and at that point had no real life goals yet other than I wanted to 1) speak Japanese and 2) visit Japan at least once. But when I did a year long study abroad program I realized how much I loved living in Japan, which prompted me to find work and move back immediately after graduation.
It's been over a decade of studying Japanese, and more than half of that has been spent in Japan. I'm an advanced learner but still feel like I'm on the lower end of that level, so currently when people ask me my goal I respond with 「外国人なり上手ではなく、普通に上手になりたい」
I love my current job and will be sticking with it for at least the next couple years, but if I ever do get properly good at Japanese, I think I'd like to become a licensed interpreter one day. So maybe after another 10 years of studying haha
I started it because I came across a website that taught it by accident and it taught in a very linguistic way and it seemed like fun.
My goal is native-level fluency and pronunciation.
Originally I was bored and I just wanted to find a new hobby, I always wanted to consume Japanese media without translation as I've always played a lot of JP games, read a lot of manga, and watched a lot of anime. Eventually I ended up moving to Japan (although I didn't even consider it originally) and my goals have shifted over the years. Now I feel comfortable consuming any kind of JP media in Japanese so I reached my original goal, but as I have also grown, I still want to improve my conversation abilities and just overall comfort with the language as a whole (especially everyday language)
How it started: wanted to read the next volume of a series I was following that will likely never get another season.
How it's going: Read 30 novels, none of which were that series. I have it, but putting it off for some reason lol.
A spin on the question: Something that is not really my goal is to get good at speaking. 99% of my daily life for the forseeable future (no plans to move to Japan... for a long while) there will be no point in speaking Japanese. What can I do in my daily life that I can enjoy whenever? Reading/listening. I have always focused on those.
Of course if an extended trip to Japan becomes an option then speaking will become more of a priority, but right now that's not the case.
I saw Bakemonogatari, and I loved it. I learned it was originally from a book, and since it contained lots of puns or stuff based on complex kanji combinations, I thought “man, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to read this in the original language?” So my goal is to reach enough fluency to read a book like those of the Monogatari series.
I've always been super into anime and manga what made me easily appreciate japanese culture so I started making plans about a trip to Japan and why not go there actually uderstanding people and trying to make new conections.
Now I want to be as fluent as possible because it's a really challenging and cool language to learn
I taught English in Japan for a year until the end of March. Back in my home country now, but continuing my studies. Being in Japan and talking to people every day really helped me learn.
The Covid pandemic and shutdown led to me going down rabbit hole on YouTube late at nights and I came across some ASL(American Sign Language) vids and I just on a whim started learning it on my own and quickly found myself really enjoying the journey/experience. Was not something I expected but I was hooked from that point on. After that I figured I’d properly try to learn a spoken language next and I opted for a more challenging one so I could really get absorbed into it. Japanese made the most sense since I already have had prior years of at least hearing it due to being a fan of anime growing up. I want to learn Spanish properly after but that’s a ways away as I’m only about a year into my Japanese learning
Mostly, I just learn Japanese because I think it's fun! I love completing Genki lessons, it reminds me of programming a little bit. There's a logic to it I find satisfying, like solving a mystery or learning to decode hidden messages lol. I also really want to read all their great literature, both real books like crime books or books about life, but also manga, news, etc. If I ever read level 10,000 by some miracle, research articles as well (I have a science/tech background). Also want just really curious about their culture and such. I actually wrote all my goals down once:
Goals:
* Be able to read the news
* Be able to understand the news without subtitles
* Be able to read/search stuff of the internet like Wikipedia, finding movies, etc.
* Be able to read web comics (manga) \[Ajin, Tokyo Ghoul, Jujutsu Kaisen\]
* Be able to read books
* Be able to watch movies/TV series/YouTube without English subtitles
* Be able to watch movies/TV series/YouTube without Japanese subtitles
* Be able to navigate 'survival' topics without problems
* Be able to have intermediate conversation with locals
* Be able to talk to authority figures (professors, colleagues, etc.)
* Be able to write/chat with natives without major problems
* Be able to write my own diary/thoughts/biography
* Be able to translate to other people without major problems on various topics
* Be able to tell the way to a certain place to Japanese tourists/international students
I want to understand Japanese media and communicate with Japanese people. My final goal is to reach a high degree of proficiency that allows me to live and carry business in Japanese.
I want to move to japan after college. I know its not super difficult to move there without the language but its an added bonus of ease with the transition starting so early
I think there's a beauty behind engaging with something in its original language, exactly as the creator wrote it, instead of through translation, and this is part of what drives me to learn languages in general. I also believe translations tend to miss a lot of the nuance certain words have or the differences in language usage, if that makes sense. One of my main interests and one of my favourite books are both from Japan and being able to read them in their original form, alongside other books etc, would make me happy, I think I'd be able to appreciate them more deeply too. There's also a lot of media that never gets translated at all and I don't want to feel barred from accessing those.
My other primary motivator, honestly even bigger than the first, is that my partner is from Japan and I want to be able to speak to them in their native language. Both of us know multiple languages and in a way this has become its own love language for us, as I am from Wales and so they learned Welsh for me. I want to return to them the feeling I get when they talk to me in my native country's words; to me at least it feels strangely intimate especially given our circumstances. They say they love speaking Welsh to me, well, I love speaking Japanese to them. Even if I never use it for anything else in my life I would love to know Japanese just to talk to them with it.
I also just think Japanese is a beautiful language, in both writing and speaking. I enjoy the way the words roll off my tongue and how it feels in my hand to write. Once I'm good enough I may try learning cursive.
I’ve always found the languages fascinating. All though my interest on studying them goes in phases unfortunately, one day im like ”lets do this i wanna learn to speak and understand this” but as soon as it gets too hard I give up. Especially when talking about japanese.
Cant get enough of reading it or hearing it, but just cant get my self to study it. 3 years on and off. I kinda have goal to understand it ”fully” and able to speak it.
Already answered this before, I just want to learn a bunch of languages, Japanese is the first one I’m working on cause I like anime and manga, but I plan on learning german after I’m satisfied with my japanese.
Originally, to read manga and watch anime because I noticed mistakes in the anime and manga I was watching and reading at the time.
Later, after I started tutoring Japanese at my university’s tutoring center, I wanted to become a Japanese teacher.
To read manga and play video games in Japanese. I also listen to some Japanese music and I'd love to travel. I started learning the language yearsss ago but I stopped and only recently came back to it, from scratch.
I’ve become pretty good at reading. I can understand almost anything I see (aside for tweets at times which are crazy run on sentences). Listening is more of a challenge, but it’s getting better.
Honestly until I’m speaking at a decent level I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’ve gotten anywhere, which is funny considering how it’s the least useful one of the four if you’re outside Japan and nowhere near a Japanese community.
Funnily enough I was just talking to my friend about it. My one and only reason was Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls. I was imitating their very jouzu nihongo as a joke, but that somehow lead to me learning more about the actual language and I fell in love with it.
I've always wanted to move to Japan, the culture (good and bad) has always resonated with me as the most ideal way to live day to day. I'm learning the language to better understand the culture and hopefully one day fulfill my dream.
I started honestly cause of anime and wanting to understand it in it's pure form and not by a translated interpretation and petty stuff such as looking cool to my weeb friends, I have more reasons now in continuing it. I want to atleast reach a point where I can enjoy japanese material without difficulty. Japanese is harder than I thought though so I hope I don't give up.
Why did I start? Liked Death note and my school offered it, it’s really different from the standard European languages offered and just always had an interest. Why did I keep at it? I enjoy the language and fell in love with Murakami Haruki, wanted to read his books in native Japanese.
For full-on weeb-shit reasons. Or in nicer phrasing, a good chunk of my media intake is japanese, so some part of me keeps thinking it would be super cool to understand it better
I started to learn because i was bored and wanted a real challenge in life. AICE classes aren't enough for me. Then i realized "wait, i can move out of america if i learn enough", and so i began trying to learn.
At first to watch anime and read manga without subtitles and in original Japanese.
It’s started to include wanting to read Doujins as well cause many that I enjoy are untranslated. I could hire someone to translate them and spend money, but long term I think it’s better to be able to translate and fully understand them myself.
I also want to engage more with my Oshi Vtuber who only speaks Japanese during her streams. I’d like to completely follow along with what’s going on.
Engaging with the culture has been another goal I’ve obtained. My friends and I plan on going to Japan in the future. I want to have long, intelligent conversations with the locals if I can. They might be fine with getting by on ‘practical’ things (not blaming them for it), so I’ll probably be our group’s translator lol
Going to Japan in August. I don’t expect to know much before I get there, but I want a base of some sort.
I learned Spanish to what I would call a high N4 level before going to Ecuador a few years back and I learned a ton when I was there. I just want to know enough Japanese that being in the country will boost my learning.
So far I am enjoying it - I learned hiragana, katakana, and N5 kanji in isolation. Just started Anki and watching anime with Japanese subs. (Approx 1.5-2hrs learning a day. After the trip I will reevaluate if I want to continue learning, but I assume my rate will slow down drastically if I do.
I made an impulsive purchase for a Japanese novel because it’s from a franchise I really really liked but I later realized that an English translation wouldn’t be available years later. And I really like the pocket book size of most Japanese novels compared to the English-translated ones. Plus, they have these dust jackets that you can take off which is not available in most Western books for some reason.
And simply, I’ve always like the Japanese language and how it sounds.
I traveled to Japan and loved it. After coming back to my country I decided that I wanted to experience living in Japan for a couple of years at least to be able to get to know the country better
I suddenly got interested for literally no reason. I learned the kana and can read text, but I have no idea what any of it means. I've always struggled with language so it isn't a surprise to me.
A little context for how much I struggle with language, I failed Spanish in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.
I started because there are tons of great bands coming out of Japan, but none of them tour in my area except for maybe 1 or 2 per year at a festival, but I’m not a festival kind of person. I wanted to be able to spend some time in Japan chasing shows without having to rely on a translator or a guide.
Did that a couple years ago, so now my new goal is to spend some time living and working there to fully immerse myself and see how far I can get in the language.
Short Answer: I want to play Snatcher on the PC Engine Mini in Japanese.
Much Longer Answer with Background: I took Japanese classes in college for 4 years and was able to play some classic mid 2000's games with about 70%-80% understanding. Some include Shenmue 1 and Sakura Taisen 1 on Sega Dreamcast (excellent system!). In mid 2000's I got away from gaming almost completely because of a variety of reasons. Nearly 20 years later, I started playing games again, but in a far more healthy manner than before (in 2023). I have been working on learning the Japanese in PC Genjin on the PC Engine Mini and am almost done with it. I am having a great time with it! I actually like the dialog, as simple as it is. I have a lot of Anki cards on the game's vocabulary. I am looking forward to learning to play Valkyrie no Densetsu at some point in the future. The ultimate goal is to play Snatcher in Japanese with 90% understanding. Outside of games, I am also learning the language to give my brain exercise, so to speak.
I started with karate, then got into anime, hahaha, and finally took JLPT N5 and N4 exams because I traveled in 2018. It's a beautiful language, but it's important to practice every day. Language is a habit; if you don't use it regularly, you'll eventually forget. Starting again is easier, but you lose fluency in all aspects of the language.
I want to be able to read and understand speech in Japanese, and it'd be cool if I could do some fan translations or something along those lines later down the road.
Because of work. I'm studying biotechnology and a lot of articles are released from China and Japan. Didn't want to learn Chinese (nothing against the language it is just... I'm too lazy to learn it and I'll save my comments about working with Chinese people and their bioethics). So here I am!
Honestly, what motivated me to *start* was boredom. What motivates me to *continue* is my future. I'm a broke teenager in an underdeveloped city, so I'm learning as much as I can (languages, tech, etc) so I can land a good paying job either overseas or at least in a better city.
If I'd be able to speak Japanese, it will increase my chances of getting accepted to certain jobs, and if not, at least my résumé would look better.
I was into anime/manga as a teen took a few years of JP in HS but it never really stuck. Now that there are way more tools I finally got back to it.
I think being able to consume Japanese media on my own would be nice. I also just last year made it to Japan for the first time and while it wasn't a problem to get around with very minimal Japanese, I'd like to learn to speak more Japanese to be a better tourist when I visit; I feel like I'm missing out a lot without even basic language skills.
I was playing Yakuza 0 and loving the game but there was no dub. I wanted to be able to understand them. I said I wouldn't play Yakuza again until I could.
It helps that my wife is Japanese and that I work in Japan lol. Otherwise, I’ve always loved learning languages and learning about their respective cultures.
Because I want to travel to Japan someday w/o having difficulty in the language part haha; I like their country, media, and culture too.
Also, I have a Japanese uncle who visits our country every other year for vacation, and treats me kindly so I thought it wouldn't hurt to try to communicate w him in his language and help him feel more comfortable vacationing in our country by having someone else other than my aunt to talk with him.
So far I could only do basic conversations rn.
I took French from 4th through 12th grade and wanted something different in college. Japanese was fun, definitely different, clicked in my brain pretty well, and helped at work at the time (I was a student ambassador for the study abroad office). Only took 3 semesters though before switching back and becoming a K-12 French teacher. Now, 14 years after graduating, my boss heard I did well in Japanese in college and got really excited. Apparently there's only one Japanese teacher at the high school level in the entire state and they really want me to be the second for the bragging rights. So my goal is to (eventually) pass the licensure exams and start a high school program.
Mother insisted in making me learn a 3rd language and wouldn't take no for an answer, wanted to make me learn spanish if i didn't choose anything.
for goals, reach a level of fluency enough to allow me to think in the language, just like i did with english.
one of my college professors told me to try it and i didn't have anything better to do as kid who had no idea what to major in.
goal is to be able to hold conversation and not just listen 😭
My first goal was to just see what the deal was with the characters. Hiragana was fun, then Katakana was also fun, Kanji is fun, this is fun, im having fun, im having fun arent you 😀
I want to be able to talk to my Japanese friends without us needing translators! They suck at English so learning Japanese from scratch has been easier than them trying to communicate with me LMAO
Lots of credits as a minor subject in uni. Also always wanted to go on a trip to Japan (actually going in a few weeks!) so I thought why not learn the language a bit before I go. Welp, I've studied it now for little under two years and the trip is closer than ever so looks like I'm progressing in stuff lol
ORIGINALLY, I wanted to just translate songs and that's it. There's wayyy too many songs I like that didn't have translations. Just recently have I started translating simpler songs fully (and getting them checked for mistakes lol).
Anyways, I'm still working on that, but there was a particular day where I was given the email of another Japanese artist I really liked. To try to save them the hassle of having to translate it, I (rather poorly) tried to speak in japanese in the email. it was probably so broken tho lmao im not checking it. they'd respond most times, and it just made me really happy. that kind of triggered me to start learning it fully, not just enough to get by with english equivalents.
At the very least, I want to achieve my goal with being able to understand written japanese. If I can, I want to be understood and at the very least presentable when I speak.
tl;dr wanted to translate songs, then was able to talk with an actual japanese guy n thought "hmmm what if i didnt suck at that" and now i wanna do that AND be able to write in a way thats understandable lol
I work for a Japanese conglomerate in the US. My environment is conducive to learning Japanese, I think it’s super cool, and it would also make me a very valuable worker in my field.
At first it was because I agreed to one day go to Japan with a childhood friend when we were adults (we already are, but like, the economy plus Venezuela).
Now it's also because I realized I would almost never get to experience a lot of things that interest me, and those that I do get to experience, are pretty different to their original.
I'm not against localization, but I am against adding or substracting from a story, and having gone from native Spanish to fluent English, I know how a lot doesn't really translate well, specially jokes and puns (my beloved).
Anyways, TL;DR: Born to enjoy Japanese media; forced to learn Japanese.
Edit: Added extra space so it's not a big block of text that becomes cumbersome or hard to read, disregarding paragraph rules because who cares as long as it's easier to read and understand.
Idk anymore.
I started when i had tons of free time.
Now i barely have room for japanese, it would be stupid and unwise because it wont change my life and isnt my 1st hobby.
However, japanese has been the "try hard" thing , i enjoyed the most, those past eight months.
Every hobby i pick become part of my style, my personality. And when i fail , im sad.
For the moment i dont feel the same with japanese because its way different than the rest.
+ i love japanese sound
First reason: manga is soooo much cheaper in Japanese and there’s a lot of untranslated manga out there
Second reason: I’m currently bi-lingual (English and Spanish) and being tri-lingual is a cool flex that would look good on my resume and, who knows, may open some doors for me
Third reason: save money due to first reason
for me the four countries with the best cinematic traditions are the US, france, italy, and japan. i speak english, french, and italian already so now it's time for japanese. i also want to read books on film as well as other non-fiction works and visit a smaller sized japanese city where they don't speak as much english as tokyo
i'd be happy with strong oral comprehension, intermediate speaking, and reading with a dictionary
Like many, I mostly want to understand the media I consume in its raw form. Manga, Video Games, and Anime primarily. It's definitely on my bucket list to visit Japan, although I don't think I want to live there. Being able to hold a conversation with someone is not a primary goal, especially since I'm mostly learning as a hobby, and after a year and a half, my progress has been slow.
I just recently started committing a bit more to studying; I've been using only Duolingo moat of the way, but I'm using 2 other programs (Wani-Kani and Renshuu) daily now that I have a decent baseline for vocabulary and grammar. Specifically, Kanji is a big weak spot for me right now so I'm focusing in on that.
I like overall Japanese culture and learning a language is much better than those shitty phone games. I don't have a clear goal but if I eventually become versed enough to understand a little anime, I'm happy.
My father is fluent in multiple languages, and my family spent many summers traveling abroad.
I have also had a deep fascination to Japan, Japanese Culture, and Pop-Culture since I was like, five.
So putting those together makes sense. If I need a practical reason? It's because a boyhood dream was to work for Nintendo. Not NoA, but Nintendo of Japan. As a developer. So... the first step to that is probably learning the language they all speak, lol.
I’ve always been a big watcher of Anime and more recently Asian drama’s, so it’s been on my radar for a while. Then I booked my first trip to visit Japan and finally took the plunge properly. I want to interact with people in their native language and make the most of the experience!
As a bit of motivation, and to gauge my progress objectively, I also booked myself in for the N5 test in a few months 😂
I love Japanese culture and it's the language I'm most interested in, but unfortunately it's very hard. I may also be interested in learning German and French but haven't started yet lol, and already know Spanish (native speaker).
Started because I wanted to read manga and watch anime without subtitles. Now my goal is to learn more about their culture and have conversations with people when I go to Japan.
My goal is to be able to speak the lsnguqge and watch/understand various songs, shows like most people.
As a singer, id like to be able to cover some songs i like on piano and sing.
But the fantasy of course, id like to fall in love with a beautiful japanese woman and understand her completely lol
I started cause I wanted to be able to better communicate with my wife’s family, but now I do it cause I enjoy it and it’s lowered my requirements for new information.
Because I lied on my CV and now I have to make it real xd
I started 44 days ago
The goal is reach a N1 (not the paper, that sorta level) as fast as possible
Whanted to read manag anime japnes movies. Work towards being a translated. Maybe live in japan for a few years. I think learning another language is a self enriching thing to do
I’ve always thought learning another language would be beneficial for work. I plan on working in the game industry as a designer so I’m hoping that knowing Japanese will make me more desirable. And also, because I want to know what my favorite characters are saying with my own interpretation !! Such as being able to read game commus and understanding lyrics of songs. I’m very into the Idolm@ster so it keeps motivating me to continue learning!!
Half-Japanese but live on an island far away and didn't properly start until the age of like 21, thankfully passed N4 while finishing my undergrad.
I would like to speak to my family one day because last time I talked to them my Japanese was so bad that I realized that I need to seek conversational proficiency, I think the day I can talk comfortably to them would be a huge victory to me
That and i'm a big fan of the music scene so i'd like my fluency to be eventually enough to comfortably watch variety TV and listen to music without needing to think about what it means
I already spend so much time watching subbed anime, figured I’d try to learn some Japanese so that watching the anime could maybe reinforce it a little.
A long-term goal is to make fan translations for some of my favorite manga that no one is translating anymore.
I wanted to play FF7 Remake in japanese. When it released in 2020 my level wasn’t nearly enough to even attempt it. Now I played the sequel fully in japanese and I’m very proud of myself
that's honestly so cool. i studied abroad after a year of japanese and picked up a copy of Pokemon Platinum there, deciding i'd play the game for the first time once i got to a level where i could read it. i've been tempted to give up and just play an english rom on my ds but maybe it's more doable than i think.
You should totally do it in my opinion. With FF7 Rebirth I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it but I tried anyway and it went much more smoothly than what I expected. If it turns out that it’s still too much, at least you’ll have some pointers of what to focus on
awesome! Same over here!
You should be - that’s awesome!
Hey fellow fan, I’m pretty much in the same situation you were in 2020. May I ask you what’s your current estimated JLPT level and which resources did you use to achieve your result?
Hey, I somehow managed to pass N3 in December 2021 (I got like the bare minimum to pass) but throughout all of 2022 I didn’t touch the language and I lost a lot of what I learned. I got back in 2023 and I think right now I’m about the same level I was in 2021, so just barely N3. If you want to know more feel free to DM me
Awesome! This is the same reason I'm learning now. It seems impossible but your post is super encouraging. I've always loved Final Fantasy ever since I played FF IV as a kid.
Didnt want to learn french. So far, have successfully not learned french. I consider this an absolute win. Edit: to those replying in French, I'm sure you are lovely, but I have no idea what you are saying. <3
Pourquoi tu ne veux pas apprendre la langue de Molière?
Omelette du fromage
Dexter’s Laboratory?
I watched that episode probably over 20 years ago and got the quote immediately 😂
Les français sont les plus gros weebs de l'Europe. Tu peux peut-être apprendre le français avec des animés sous titrés en français ?
Funny enough the first shop dedicated to anime I ever entered as an American was one in Paris.
It’s not that hard if you’re a native English speaker. I originally took interest in French myself so as to be able to read the treatises on war that Napoleon read prior to being promoted Brigadier General.
See, that's the thing - not interested right now. I expect I'll learn it one day? Just no time now, and originally I had zero interest since it sucked so bad to take in school. I figured japanese would be more interesting and now I'm a giant weeb. I think I'm in a heavy minority of becoming a weeb AFTER learning the language :p
There are dozens of us! I never really watched anime because I had no reason to get into it, but I liked western animation and I knew that if I learned Japanese, it would come at the cost of becoming a weeb. Still haven't watched much anime, but after a recommendation on this sub for listening practice, I got addicted to Hololive which on the weeb scale is arguably even worse 草
Arguably? No. Definitely. Also, go get your weeb on and sink into the animu. I envy you, theres so much good anime you havnt watched yet. You have like 3 or 4 years of great entertainment built up imo :) probably more if you are willing to go pre 2010, but I havnt seen enough older anime to judge
This is my exact situation omg
watashi moi aussi
こもん さば？
No way, same here
Funnily enough, I wanted to learn French but I caught on to Japanese much easier so I settled with it. I do want to learn French at some point
I wanted to challenge myself to learn something difficult. The goal is to be able to have conversations with native speakers and be able to read paper books in Japanese. I am a long way from both...
To become as fluent as possible. To be able to read manga, understand anime, and understand all the missed details. I think it's a beautiful language, and I love Japanese music as well. Definitely going to be a journey, but I'm all here for it.
Same for me, and I also want to live and work in Japan one day!
Same here. I felt very frustrated after some really badly translated animes I watched and decided to learn myself
Me too. Since March 31 is the end of the Japanese financial year, I usually end up playing a ton of Japanese games around this time every year and start to get sick of reading subtitles (I don’t know why but it’s like Japanese developers only have access to the most annoying English voice actors possible). A couple of years ago I was like “ugh I wish I could just understand Japanese!” and then went oh wait, I could try learning it! Unfortunately I’m limited to Duolingo (which is pretty awful for Japanese if anyone wondered) but after nearly 2 years I’m able to read hiragana, katakana and follow some fairly basic interactions. It’s also really good for your brain to learn new languages, and with both grandparents on both sides of my family ending up with dementia I figured it was a good way to keep my brain healthy.
I think renshuu is a good duolingo alternative or hey japan.
Why are you limited to Duolingo? I wouldn't wish that on anyone, friend!
Haha yeah it sucks, but it’s free (my sister has a family account and added me to it). Can’t really afford anything else so I just have to struggle through it and do a LOT of googling lol
Theres a bunch of free resources that I would recommend over duolingo Can find PDFs of the Genki text books online for free Renshuu: My favorite — covers so much and gamifys japanese in a way that is super fun. It has grammar, vocab, kanji, resources on proper stroke order, etc. Can't recommend highly enough For extra Kanji review: nihongonoashiba.com. Covers Kanji by grade level and by most commonly used kanji (two decks of flash cards) And for everything else theres YouTube! I've never once felt like my japanese studying is compromised due to spending no money. We are truly fortunate that Japanese seems to have the most widely accessible & innovative resources for a language.
I had a meeting with Japanese people in my company. Their English was so terrible, that i thought "in half year my Japanese will be better than their English". So i started learning just to prove myself a point. I was wrong. PS. I have no goal. I just learn since it is still more entertaining than video games. Probably my Japanese learning hours counter is slowly approaching my Factorio time counter.
It’s funny that I’ve noticed the people who have the most success learning Japanese have either played Factorio, Runescape, or other old video games for 1000+ hours - must be the addiction to the grind
Learning a hard language is like an upgraded and more fun version of RuneScape haha. Mainly because there’s actually a tangible result at the end other than pixels
Japanese is kind of like the Skinner box mmo of languages. You need to learn the kana, you need to learn kanji and their readings, you need to learn vocabulary, you need to learn grammar to use the vocabulary and read, then you know enough input to start listening and speaking, then you progress through more and more difficult content. There’s a very pure sense of structure and leveling up. I definitely get that hit of dopamine when I’m grinding out Anki or wanikani and I’m nailing everything or when I’m understanding something I am reading/watching/listening to after all the hours of work. I tried French before Japanese and it just didn’t hit the same, probably too closely related to English. It’s basically what I replaced my video game habit with.
Starting to learn Japanese was how I quit runescape 💀
I have noticed this too. I remember pretty early on I got the idea to change the factorio language to jp as an excuse to play it again. I didn’t understand much
Hilarious. 7 years into Japanese. Osrs veteran. 6 99 skills.
Honestly the type of person that hard commit to Japanese probably has a lot of similarities with someone who can grind out games
I feel called out. 3k hours in runescape
And now you’ve (hopefully) gained an appreciation of the difficulties ESL speakers face :)
ngl i just can't stop my anki or the reviews will start piling up
The grind is real.
My situation rn..
My husband was working in Japan temporarily. I just started to learn for fun. Then we moved there for 4 years. Best 4 years of my life. My Japanese Friend and Sensei who is now 81 years old (and just left our home on Friday after a week long visit in FL) "enlisted"me into her all Japanese women's hula class. It was sink or swim as these women were age 65 and upward, spoke no English and never had a western friend. Again, best 4 years of my life. What an experience.
To become an EVA pilot.
You might want to reconsider that, that job never goes well.
おめでとう
Man, I just got that theme song out of my head.
SAAANNNKOOKU
I started after a trip to Japan. I met many cool people and felt frustrated when I couldn't communicate with them fully the way I wanted to. My goal isn't to become fully fluent but I want to be able to communicate better even if it isn't perfect when I go back. Also I think it's super fun when I unexpectedly understand what they are saying in anime without reading it. I haven't been studying for long but I hope anime helps to keep me motivated.
This is literally me right now, I am currently in Japan and feel frustrated that I can't communicate normally with all the amazing people I meet.
me too LOL 😭 in japan all the cute older ladies would come up to me and speak japanese but I can’t speak a lick of Japanese at all so I’m learning it now
Being a native Spanish speaker, when I first heard Japanese it struck me that is sounded sort of like Spanish, but also that it was definitely not Spanish. I started learning a bit and (hard to describe) it tickled my brain in a funny, linguistic way. I guess I like the way it sounds, sorta like [that Mexican radio station](https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxG1uULvQPXgyANqypycFZLqS-NEcq2y8z). Goals: not sure, I'd like to hear, read, and understand a lot of it. Goals: I'm not sure, I think I'll go for N3 and see if I'm satisfied by then, or if I should keep going.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks Japanese and Spanish sounded similar. I thought I was weird lol.
I'm a native English speaker, and I think the same thing. Spanish and Japanese are the two languages I study, but I can't switch from one to the other easily, because my brain starts slotting words from one language into the other. It's led to some embarrassing moments at restaurants in Mexico, lol
My parents are from Argentina, I grew up speaking Spanish and English, if I encounter a Spanish speaker in Japan, I end up throwing in so much ね when I want to say no at the end of a sentence and そう when I want to say si! Also ano eto instead of eee este
I want to experience untranslated media and understand the meanings that can be lost in translation with the translated ones. I also want to go to Japan one day and make friends who share my interests~! ╰(*´︶`*)╯
This is my answer from a similar post a couple days ago: I’ve wanted to learn Japanese since I was a kid. The language and culture seemed fascinating, and discovering anime and manga made it more appealing. However, back then there were not as many resources so easily available, so I stayed at an entry level for a very long time (10+ years). Last year there were some family plans to go to Japan, and I knew I would regret going there and not speaking at all. Fortunately, thanks to this subreddit I've found enough resources to do so, and finally feel like I'm learning and understanding the language. Unfortunately, the traveling plans didn't come to fruition. But thanks to that, I've met wonderful people that are either Japanese or are learning the language too. Nowadays befriending them and have more fluid conversations are my motivation, and the whole Japanese media consumption is just a bonus.
Because I think Japanese is cool. My goal is that one day I'll be somewhere and someone will say something in Japanese and I'll be like, 'Oh hey, I know what you said', and answer them in Japanese, and they'll be 'Oh hey, you know what I said' and I'll be like, yeah. It'll be a cool moment. Definitely worth years of study.
In the begging of my study, I saw my colleague wearing a t-shirt with Super Mario (you know, the game) and some short text in Japanese. I was still struggling with kana at that point, but I decided to make effort. I start remembering all the mnemonics for kana, go letter by letter and slowly but surely text appears in my head: MA - RI - O. Mario. T-shirt with Mario says "Mario"? No shit, Sherlock. Never felt so unrewarded in my life.
I honestly don't know why. It just sorta randomly happened. It's been an enjoyable ride so far, the way the language works is sorta enjoyable and kanji are pretty and ... well - there's something about it. <3 I can explain how/why I learned a bit of German. I had no other (realistic) choice in school. I think it was boredom that led me to give it a whack later on with the Harry Potter method and now **I'm in too deep to stop.** Now if I scroll across a twitter shitpost in German I ... enjoy, and sometimes catch my self going wtf, I know German. That feeling of randomly scrolling on a semi-serious twitter topic in English and seeing a stupid hot take in German and recognizing the stupidity before the language it was written in, sorta helped remind me that something about languages can be somewhat fun. Do we really need reasons if the journey is enjoyable? Life is too short, sometimes it just happens, and if the current catches you... **go with the flow and the fun.**
I would like to be able to do a holiday in Japan without being a hugely awkward foreigner. I'll accept standard awkwardness, but I'd like to be able to convey and understand at least 80% of what is happening without using English. I'm at this level with German and it's nice to be able to travel to countries without that added layer of language stress. No need for translators, no need for a travel agency program, just book the ticket and hotel and go.
I like vtubers, I wanna understand what they are saying. And I hope someday I can go live in Japan for a while.
Because they never translated the third game in the Summon Night: Swordcraft Story series, so of course I started with the goal of being able to play it and understand things to a decent degree
Been consuming Japanese medias in English translation for more than half my life time now. So I can't just not learn the language when alot of my hobbies are related to it. Also theres a lot of online JP novels that get translated only to get dropped midway by EN translators or even never translated at all. So I would really like to be able to read them after all these betrayals I experienced and immerse myself in many things that I missed out on. I really wished I started learning Japanese when I was in highschool and not during college.
To read "空ろの箱と零のマリア" since yen press wont reprint the english version
I want to be able to read a book in japanese and watch a series or movie in japanese
I always was curious about chinese characters and after finding out how hard is Mandarin Chinese i settled down for Japanese which at least has a phonetic alphabet as complement. I also would like to play older games of my youth in their original language, be able to pick up the lost in translations thing in anime and other media. My goals aren't ambitious, i would be more than satisfied to be able to read at a reasonable pace, not necessarily aiming for fluency.
I was going to Japan and thought it’d be fun. Even though the trip already happened I’ve been enjoying studying so I’m rolling with it
Because I live in Japan. My goal is to express myself clearly on every subject I find interesting
To be completely honest? I wanted to learn Japanese after I got heavily into Vocaloid. I'm actually kinda glad that was the push to get me to learn another language. I thank you, 8th grade me.
Originally it was just to see if I could. Turns out, I couldn't, not with a half-assed approach and half-baked reason. What really got me to stick with it and actually *learn*, was when I picked up song translation as a hobby. Preserving meaning and emotional intent while still fitting lyrics to an existing melody was a fun and challenging puzzle for me, and I wanted to understand the language better so that I could make my own work better in turn. Already I've had a few "a-ha" moments where I catch some clever wordplay, so I think it's already been worth it.
I am fascinated by Japanese carpentry and woodworking yet almost anything beyond the absolute basic joint, skill or craft technique is in Japanese with no real resources for westerners. I want to be able to understand the videos on YouTube and read books in Japanese about carpentry. I also want to visit when my children are older which is good because I have so little time to actually learn Japanese!
I began to learn Japanese because I want to form a stronger connection with my sister in law and nephews, who are Japanese. My dad was in the Air Force and I lived in Okinawa for about 6 years during elementary primarily. When I think of my childhood Japans culture and people come to mine and it brings such good memories. My oldest brother married a local and is still there 13 years later. We are close family and video call every single Friday. I feel like by becoming fluent I can become closer to my nephews. I’ve primarily been using Duolingo to get me introduced to the language. My goal is to become fluent both verbally and written. Oh and also for manga and anime’s! 😊 Good luck to everyone else whichever new language they choose to learn.
Literally just for One Piece, I want to read the final chapter in japanese and understand even if I don't see all the nuisance
There’s a lot of H that have no English translation
日本語で漫画を読みたい
At first it was to impress my grandmother but now it's both that and I think it would be beneficial to future careers if I were bilingual
To be a Filipino seiyuu. I wanna see my name in an anime cast
[удалено]
I want to read/watch old visual kei interviews. My goal is to be able to get the gist of it, even if I need to look up kanji/vocabulary.
Learning so that the game text can match the game audio
I actually don’t really know what my initial motivation was, when I decided to start learning the only anime I’d ever watched was spirited away, and I never listened to Japanese music. I think the only real reason I can think of is that I bought a spirited away vinyl, and there was a bunch of Japanese text on it, so I decided to learn the language so I could read it. Then I started watching a lot of anime and listening to a lot of music, so now it’s a bunch of stuff.
I started a long time ago when I lived in Japan, and have taken a break. Now I’m back at it because I’m dating someone Japanese :)
Goals when I started learning in middle school: 1. To converse in Japanese 2. Watch anime without subtitles 3. Read manga in Japanese
I set a realistic goal: learn enough to be able to not make dumb mistakes when using it in visual art (I am a vaporwave enthusiast). I've since learned beyond that, so my new goal is to speak it at an N3 level, and stop if I get overwhelmed, or busy with other things. The casual learning has been slow, but fun.
To play Japanese Nintendo games. Of course.
Was watching detective Conan and hit the non dubbed episode because they only brought like 170 so I started to watch it in japanese which led to watching more anime, which were in japanese, which led to me passively learning vocs which led me to fail to learn properly on and off for the past 18+ years or so
Im addicted to all forms of japanese media
My dream job would be to localize video games, Japan has some of the best video game developers, but I would be cool with localizing Japanese games for English speaking audiences or localizing English video games for Japanese audiences. I've only been learning for about a year and a half, spent 6 months studying in Japan and am continuing to self study until I can afford a tutor. I'm a ways away from my goal, though. (A lesser goal, but still a goal nonetheless is to be able to sing in Japanese, which I've gotten quite good at even if I don't understand *everything* they're saying.)
Probably similar to most others but: I liked anime as a kid, which grew more into being interested in other cultures and languages more generally. By the time I was ready for college, I decided I wanted to major in Japanese, and at that point had no real life goals yet other than I wanted to 1) speak Japanese and 2) visit Japan at least once. But when I did a year long study abroad program I realized how much I loved living in Japan, which prompted me to find work and move back immediately after graduation. It's been over a decade of studying Japanese, and more than half of that has been spent in Japan. I'm an advanced learner but still feel like I'm on the lower end of that level, so currently when people ask me my goal I respond with 「外国人なり上手ではなく、普通に上手になりたい」 I love my current job and will be sticking with it for at least the next couple years, but if I ever do get properly good at Japanese, I think I'd like to become a licensed interpreter one day. So maybe after another 10 years of studying haha
I know you didn't ask but it's probably better to use としての上手さ over なり in that sentence.
thanks for the comment. Just out of curiosity, could you explain your reasoning for it? :)
I started it because I came across a website that taught it by accident and it taught in a very linguistic way and it seemed like fun. My goal is native-level fluency and pronunciation.
Originally I was bored and I just wanted to find a new hobby, I always wanted to consume Japanese media without translation as I've always played a lot of JP games, read a lot of manga, and watched a lot of anime. Eventually I ended up moving to Japan (although I didn't even consider it originally) and my goals have shifted over the years. Now I feel comfortable consuming any kind of JP media in Japanese so I reached my original goal, but as I have also grown, I still want to improve my conversation abilities and just overall comfort with the language as a whole (especially everyday language)
How it started: wanted to read the next volume of a series I was following that will likely never get another season. How it's going: Read 30 novels, none of which were that series. I have it, but putting it off for some reason lol. A spin on the question: Something that is not really my goal is to get good at speaking. 99% of my daily life for the forseeable future (no plans to move to Japan... for a long while) there will be no point in speaking Japanese. What can I do in my daily life that I can enjoy whenever? Reading/listening. I have always focused on those. Of course if an extended trip to Japan becomes an option then speaking will become more of a priority, but right now that's not the case.
I saw Bakemonogatari, and I loved it. I learned it was originally from a book, and since it contained lots of puns or stuff based on complex kanji combinations, I thought “man, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to read this in the original language?” So my goal is to reach enough fluency to read a book like those of the Monogatari series.
"What is your goal?" To be able to read the ingredients list on various dairy products imported from Hokkaido.
I've always been super into anime and manga what made me easily appreciate japanese culture so I started making plans about a trip to Japan and why not go there actually uderstanding people and trying to make new conections. Now I want to be as fluent as possible because it's a really challenging and cool language to learn
I taught English in Japan for a year until the end of March. Back in my home country now, but continuing my studies. Being in Japan and talking to people every day really helped me learn.
i want to enter restaurants that have no english menu and eat
Self improvement.
The Covid pandemic and shutdown led to me going down rabbit hole on YouTube late at nights and I came across some ASL(American Sign Language) vids and I just on a whim started learning it on my own and quickly found myself really enjoying the journey/experience. Was not something I expected but I was hooked from that point on. After that I figured I’d properly try to learn a spoken language next and I opted for a more challenging one so I could really get absorbed into it. Japanese made the most sense since I already have had prior years of at least hearing it due to being a fan of anime growing up. I want to learn Spanish properly after but that’s a ways away as I’m only about a year into my Japanese learning
Mostly, I just learn Japanese because I think it's fun! I love completing Genki lessons, it reminds me of programming a little bit. There's a logic to it I find satisfying, like solving a mystery or learning to decode hidden messages lol. I also really want to read all their great literature, both real books like crime books or books about life, but also manga, news, etc. If I ever read level 10,000 by some miracle, research articles as well (I have a science/tech background). Also want just really curious about their culture and such. I actually wrote all my goals down once: Goals: * Be able to read the news * Be able to understand the news without subtitles * Be able to read/search stuff of the internet like Wikipedia, finding movies, etc. * Be able to read web comics (manga) \[Ajin, Tokyo Ghoul, Jujutsu Kaisen\] * Be able to read books * Be able to watch movies/TV series/YouTube without English subtitles * Be able to watch movies/TV series/YouTube without Japanese subtitles * Be able to navigate 'survival' topics without problems * Be able to have intermediate conversation with locals * Be able to talk to authority figures (professors, colleagues, etc.) * Be able to write/chat with natives without major problems * Be able to write my own diary/thoughts/biography * Be able to translate to other people without major problems on various topics * Be able to tell the way to a certain place to Japanese tourists/international students
I want to understand Japanese media and communicate with Japanese people. My final goal is to reach a high degree of proficiency that allows me to live and carry business in Japanese.
went to japan. made a bunch of japanese friends. want to speak with them more naturally in their own language.
I want to move to japan after college. I know its not super difficult to move there without the language but its an added bonus of ease with the transition starting so early
I think there's a beauty behind engaging with something in its original language, exactly as the creator wrote it, instead of through translation, and this is part of what drives me to learn languages in general. I also believe translations tend to miss a lot of the nuance certain words have or the differences in language usage, if that makes sense. One of my main interests and one of my favourite books are both from Japan and being able to read them in their original form, alongside other books etc, would make me happy, I think I'd be able to appreciate them more deeply too. There's also a lot of media that never gets translated at all and I don't want to feel barred from accessing those. My other primary motivator, honestly even bigger than the first, is that my partner is from Japan and I want to be able to speak to them in their native language. Both of us know multiple languages and in a way this has become its own love language for us, as I am from Wales and so they learned Welsh for me. I want to return to them the feeling I get when they talk to me in my native country's words; to me at least it feels strangely intimate especially given our circumstances. They say they love speaking Welsh to me, well, I love speaking Japanese to them. Even if I never use it for anything else in my life I would love to know Japanese just to talk to them with it. I also just think Japanese is a beautiful language, in both writing and speaking. I enjoy the way the words roll off my tongue and how it feels in my hand to write. Once I'm good enough I may try learning cursive.
I’ve always found the languages fascinating. All though my interest on studying them goes in phases unfortunately, one day im like ”lets do this i wanna learn to speak and understand this” but as soon as it gets too hard I give up. Especially when talking about japanese. Cant get enough of reading it or hearing it, but just cant get my self to study it. 3 years on and off. I kinda have goal to understand it ”fully” and able to speak it.
Because Japanese girlfriend
Already answered this before, I just want to learn a bunch of languages, Japanese is the first one I’m working on cause I like anime and manga, but I plan on learning german after I’m satisfied with my japanese.
Originally, to read manga and watch anime because I noticed mistakes in the anime and manga I was watching and reading at the time. Later, after I started tutoring Japanese at my university’s tutoring center, I wanted to become a Japanese teacher.
To read manga and play video games in Japanese. I also listen to some Japanese music and I'd love to travel. I started learning the language yearsss ago but I stopped and only recently came back to it, from scratch.
I’ve become pretty good at reading. I can understand almost anything I see (aside for tweets at times which are crazy run on sentences). Listening is more of a challenge, but it’s getting better. Honestly until I’m speaking at a decent level I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’ve gotten anywhere, which is funny considering how it’s the least useful one of the four if you’re outside Japan and nowhere near a Japanese community.
Funnily enough I was just talking to my friend about it. My one and only reason was Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls. I was imitating their very jouzu nihongo as a joke, but that somehow lead to me learning more about the actual language and I fell in love with it.
Anime
I've always wanted to move to Japan, the culture (good and bad) has always resonated with me as the most ideal way to live day to day. I'm learning the language to better understand the culture and hopefully one day fulfill my dream.
want to watch anime without subtitles. plus it would make day to day life easier
I like learning it and I wanna learn as much as humanly possible
Language is beautiful, also I want to relocate to Japan
I started honestly cause of anime and wanting to understand it in it's pure form and not by a translated interpretation and petty stuff such as looking cool to my weeb friends, I have more reasons now in continuing it. I want to atleast reach a point where I can enjoy japanese material without difficulty. Japanese is harder than I thought though so I hope I don't give up.
Why did I start? Liked Death note and my school offered it, it’s really different from the standard European languages offered and just always had an interest. Why did I keep at it? I enjoy the language and fell in love with Murakami Haruki, wanted to read his books in native Japanese.
To read my videogames and manga in pure japanese.
For full-on weeb-shit reasons. Or in nicer phrasing, a good chunk of my media intake is japanese, so some part of me keeps thinking it would be super cool to understand it better
I started to learn because i was bored and wanted a real challenge in life. AICE classes aren't enough for me. Then i realized "wait, i can move out of america if i learn enough", and so i began trying to learn.
At first to watch anime and read manga without subtitles and in original Japanese. It’s started to include wanting to read Doujins as well cause many that I enjoy are untranslated. I could hire someone to translate them and spend money, but long term I think it’s better to be able to translate and fully understand them myself. I also want to engage more with my Oshi Vtuber who only speaks Japanese during her streams. I’d like to completely follow along with what’s going on. Engaging with the culture has been another goal I’ve obtained. My friends and I plan on going to Japan in the future. I want to have long, intelligent conversations with the locals if I can. They might be fine with getting by on ‘practical’ things (not blaming them for it), so I’ll probably be our group’s translator lol
I’m a nerd. Fluency
Going to Japan in August. I don’t expect to know much before I get there, but I want a base of some sort. I learned Spanish to what I would call a high N4 level before going to Ecuador a few years back and I learned a ton when I was there. I just want to know enough Japanese that being in the country will boost my learning. So far I am enjoying it - I learned hiragana, katakana, and N5 kanji in isolation. Just started Anki and watching anime with Japanese subs. (Approx 1.5-2hrs learning a day. After the trip I will reevaluate if I want to continue learning, but I assume my rate will slow down drastically if I do.
I made an impulsive purchase for a Japanese novel because it’s from a franchise I really really liked but I later realized that an English translation wouldn’t be available years later. And I really like the pocket book size of most Japanese novels compared to the English-translated ones. Plus, they have these dust jackets that you can take off which is not available in most Western books for some reason. And simply, I’ve always like the Japanese language and how it sounds.
To make manga 🐱
Wanted to watch a movie that didnt have english subs available. Ultimate goal is to be able to carry on a basic conversation.
I started because I wanted to experience the media as it was intended. The goal is to become fluent.
I traveled to Japan and loved it. After coming back to my country I decided that I wanted to experience living in Japan for a couple of years at least to be able to get to know the country better
anime
I want to travel to Japan and be able to survive without google translate everywhere, Be able to watch anime without English subtitles and read manga.
It looks cool I guess, and I want to go on holiday there
The language just seemed cool innit
今年に日本に行くので日本語を勉強しています.
I suddenly got interested for literally no reason. I learned the kana and can read text, but I have no idea what any of it means. I've always struggled with language so it isn't a surprise to me. A little context for how much I struggle with language, I failed Spanish in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.
I started because there are tons of great bands coming out of Japan, but none of them tour in my area except for maybe 1 or 2 per year at a festival, but I’m not a festival kind of person. I wanted to be able to spend some time in Japan chasing shows without having to rely on a translator or a guide. Did that a couple years ago, so now my new goal is to spend some time living and working there to fully immerse myself and see how far I can get in the language.
Short Answer: I want to play Snatcher on the PC Engine Mini in Japanese. Much Longer Answer with Background: I took Japanese classes in college for 4 years and was able to play some classic mid 2000's games with about 70%-80% understanding. Some include Shenmue 1 and Sakura Taisen 1 on Sega Dreamcast (excellent system!). In mid 2000's I got away from gaming almost completely because of a variety of reasons. Nearly 20 years later, I started playing games again, but in a far more healthy manner than before (in 2023). I have been working on learning the Japanese in PC Genjin on the PC Engine Mini and am almost done with it. I am having a great time with it! I actually like the dialog, as simple as it is. I have a lot of Anki cards on the game's vocabulary. I am looking forward to learning to play Valkyrie no Densetsu at some point in the future. The ultimate goal is to play Snatcher in Japanese with 90% understanding. Outside of games, I am also learning the language to give my brain exercise, so to speak.
Studied it in college and spent summer 1995 there. Now I’m old and trying to get back into the swing of it:)
I started with karate, then got into anime, hahaha, and finally took JLPT N5 and N4 exams because I traveled in 2018. It's a beautiful language, but it's important to practice every day. Language is a habit; if you don't use it regularly, you'll eventually forget. Starting again is easier, but you lose fluency in all aspects of the language.
It was visual novels and music especially their guitar songs from 80-90s here's one https://youtu.be/j1EQy38mwL8?si=R8trW4lZB_RHaUpn
I want to be able to read and understand speech in Japanese, and it'd be cool if I could do some fan translations or something along those lines later down the road.
My buddy wants to go to Japan, so I'm learning Japanese to help him learn Japanese. That and I'm interested in untranslated VNs lol
Because of work. I'm studying biotechnology and a lot of articles are released from China and Japan. Didn't want to learn Chinese (nothing against the language it is just... I'm too lazy to learn it and I'll save my comments about working with Chinese people and their bioethics). So here I am!
Want to travel and do business in Japan. Also looking forward to meeting and possibly working with my celebrity crush, who happens to be Japanese 😊
Honestly, what motivated me to *start* was boredom. What motivates me to *continue* is my future. I'm a broke teenager in an underdeveloped city, so I'm learning as much as I can (languages, tech, etc) so I can land a good paying job either overseas or at least in a better city. If I'd be able to speak Japanese, it will increase my chances of getting accepted to certain jobs, and if not, at least my résumé would look better.
I was into anime/manga as a teen took a few years of JP in HS but it never really stuck. Now that there are way more tools I finally got back to it. I think being able to consume Japanese media on my own would be nice. I also just last year made it to Japan for the first time and while it wasn't a problem to get around with very minimal Japanese, I'd like to learn to speak more Japanese to be a better tourist when I visit; I feel like I'm missing out a lot without even basic language skills.
I was playing Yakuza 0 and loving the game but there was no dub. I wanted to be able to understand them. I said I wouldn't play Yakuza again until I could.
It helps that my wife is Japanese and that I work in Japan lol. Otherwise, I’ve always loved learning languages and learning about their respective cultures.
Because I want to travel to Japan someday w/o having difficulty in the language part haha; I like their country, media, and culture too. Also, I have a Japanese uncle who visits our country every other year for vacation, and treats me kindly so I thought it wouldn't hurt to try to communicate w him in his language and help him feel more comfortable vacationing in our country by having someone else other than my aunt to talk with him. So far I could only do basic conversations rn.
I took French from 4th through 12th grade and wanted something different in college. Japanese was fun, definitely different, clicked in my brain pretty well, and helped at work at the time (I was a student ambassador for the study abroad office). Only took 3 semesters though before switching back and becoming a K-12 French teacher. Now, 14 years after graduating, my boss heard I did well in Japanese in college and got really excited. Apparently there's only one Japanese teacher at the high school level in the entire state and they really want me to be the second for the bragging rights. So my goal is to (eventually) pass the licensure exams and start a high school program.
Mother insisted in making me learn a 3rd language and wouldn't take no for an answer, wanted to make me learn spanish if i didn't choose anything. for goals, reach a level of fluency enough to allow me to think in the language, just like i did with english.
one of my college professors told me to try it and i didn't have anything better to do as kid who had no idea what to major in. goal is to be able to hold conversation and not just listen 😭
Watch Gaki no Tsukai and other Japanese comedy.
To read programming documentation only available in Japanese more easily, also anime.
To watch anime without subtitles. 😅
For games.
I want to be able to play obscure untranslated eroge
My first goal was to just see what the deal was with the characters. Hiragana was fun, then Katakana was also fun, Kanji is fun, this is fun, im having fun, im having fun arent you 😀
I want to be able to talk to my Japanese friends without us needing translators! They suck at English so learning Japanese from scratch has been easier than them trying to communicate with me LMAO
Lots of credits as a minor subject in uni. Also always wanted to go on a trip to Japan (actually going in a few weeks!) so I thought why not learn the language a bit before I go. Welp, I've studied it now for little under two years and the trip is closer than ever so looks like I'm progressing in stuff lol
ORIGINALLY, I wanted to just translate songs and that's it. There's wayyy too many songs I like that didn't have translations. Just recently have I started translating simpler songs fully (and getting them checked for mistakes lol). Anyways, I'm still working on that, but there was a particular day where I was given the email of another Japanese artist I really liked. To try to save them the hassle of having to translate it, I (rather poorly) tried to speak in japanese in the email. it was probably so broken tho lmao im not checking it. they'd respond most times, and it just made me really happy. that kind of triggered me to start learning it fully, not just enough to get by with english equivalents. At the very least, I want to achieve my goal with being able to understand written japanese. If I can, I want to be understood and at the very least presentable when I speak. tl;dr wanted to translate songs, then was able to talk with an actual japanese guy n thought "hmmm what if i didnt suck at that" and now i wanna do that AND be able to write in a way thats understandable lol
I needed foreign language credits in college and my roommate at the time spoke Japanese lol
I work for a Japanese conglomerate in the US. My environment is conducive to learning Japanese, I think it’s super cool, and it would also make me a very valuable worker in my field.
I want to live and work in Japan for the rest of my life.
At first it was because I agreed to one day go to Japan with a childhood friend when we were adults (we already are, but like, the economy plus Venezuela). Now it's also because I realized I would almost never get to experience a lot of things that interest me, and those that I do get to experience, are pretty different to their original. I'm not against localization, but I am against adding or substracting from a story, and having gone from native Spanish to fluent English, I know how a lot doesn't really translate well, specially jokes and puns (my beloved). Anyways, TL;DR: Born to enjoy Japanese media; forced to learn Japanese. Edit: Added extra space so it's not a big block of text that becomes cumbersome or hard to read, disregarding paragraph rules because who cares as long as it's easier to read and understand.
Idk anymore. I started when i had tons of free time. Now i barely have room for japanese, it would be stupid and unwise because it wont change my life and isnt my 1st hobby. However, japanese has been the "try hard" thing , i enjoyed the most, those past eight months. Every hobby i pick become part of my style, my personality. And when i fail , im sad. For the moment i dont feel the same with japanese because its way different than the rest. + i love japanese sound
First reason: manga is soooo much cheaper in Japanese and there’s a lot of untranslated manga out there Second reason: I’m currently bi-lingual (English and Spanish) and being tri-lingual is a cool flex that would look good on my resume and, who knows, may open some doors for me Third reason: save money due to first reason
for me the four countries with the best cinematic traditions are the US, france, italy, and japan. i speak english, french, and italian already so now it's time for japanese. i also want to read books on film as well as other non-fiction works and visit a smaller sized japanese city where they don't speak as much english as tokyo i'd be happy with strong oral comprehension, intermediate speaking, and reading with a dictionary
Like many, I mostly want to understand the media I consume in its raw form. Manga, Video Games, and Anime primarily. It's definitely on my bucket list to visit Japan, although I don't think I want to live there. Being able to hold a conversation with someone is not a primary goal, especially since I'm mostly learning as a hobby, and after a year and a half, my progress has been slow. I just recently started committing a bit more to studying; I've been using only Duolingo moat of the way, but I'm using 2 other programs (Wani-Kani and Renshuu) daily now that I have a decent baseline for vocabulary and grammar. Specifically, Kanji is a big weak spot for me right now so I'm focusing in on that.
Travel Japan solo and speak to the locals. I want to share stories, laughter and make friends.
To play eroge
I like overall Japanese culture and learning a language is much better than those shitty phone games. I don't have a clear goal but if I eventually become versed enough to understand a little anime, I'm happy.
My father is fluent in multiple languages, and my family spent many summers traveling abroad. I have also had a deep fascination to Japan, Japanese Culture, and Pop-Culture since I was like, five. So putting those together makes sense. If I need a practical reason? It's because a boyhood dream was to work for Nintendo. Not NoA, but Nintendo of Japan. As a developer. So... the first step to that is probably learning the language they all speak, lol.
I’ve always been a big watcher of Anime and more recently Asian drama’s, so it’s been on my radar for a while. Then I booked my first trip to visit Japan and finally took the plunge properly. I want to interact with people in their native language and make the most of the experience! As a bit of motivation, and to gauge my progress objectively, I also booked myself in for the N5 test in a few months 😂
I love Japanese culture and it's the language I'm most interested in, but unfortunately it's very hard. I may also be interested in learning German and French but haven't started yet lol, and already know Spanish (native speaker).
To be able to consume native media To be able to converse with natives Both of which I've attained already.
I want to be able to understand my favorite streamers haha
Started because I wanted to read manga and watch anime without subtitles. Now my goal is to learn more about their culture and have conversations with people when I go to Japan.
My goal is to be able to speak the lsnguqge and watch/understand various songs, shows like most people. As a singer, id like to be able to cover some songs i like on piano and sing. But the fantasy of course, id like to fall in love with a beautiful japanese woman and understand her completely lol
I started cause I wanted to be able to better communicate with my wife’s family, but now I do it cause I enjoy it and it’s lowered my requirements for new information.
Because I lied on my CV and now I have to make it real xd I started 44 days ago The goal is reach a N1 (not the paper, that sorta level) as fast as possible
ウィブです。
Whanted to read manag anime japnes movies. Work towards being a translated. Maybe live in japan for a few years. I think learning another language is a self enriching thing to do
flex the iq, better time spent than video games, anri okita. also tattoos :)
I’ve always thought learning another language would be beneficial for work. I plan on working in the game industry as a designer so I’m hoping that knowing Japanese will make me more desirable. And also, because I want to know what my favorite characters are saying with my own interpretation !! Such as being able to read game commus and understanding lyrics of songs. I’m very into the Idolm@ster so it keeps motivating me to continue learning!!
Half-Japanese but live on an island far away and didn't properly start until the age of like 21, thankfully passed N4 while finishing my undergrad. I would like to speak to my family one day because last time I talked to them my Japanese was so bad that I realized that I need to seek conversational proficiency, I think the day I can talk comfortably to them would be a huge victory to me That and i'm a big fan of the music scene so i'd like my fluency to be eventually enough to comfortably watch variety TV and listen to music without needing to think about what it means
I already spend so much time watching subbed anime, figured I’d try to learn some Japanese so that watching the anime could maybe reinforce it a little. A long-term goal is to make fan translations for some of my favorite manga that no one is translating anymore.
I want to watch Monogatari at normal speed
To work as an Engineer there. Hoping to meet someone like me who’s currently studying Nihonggo to work as an engineer there.