Why are you learning Japanese?

48 comments

1. I want to go to Japan and have a genuine conversation with someone in a shop, restaurant. Be able to read and understand everything there.
   Also anime, cooking and art/history discovery

2. To understand JP Youtube and video games

3. My dream is to be a polyglot

4. Idk, I downloaded duolingo in december to revise French prior to a little trip there (I studied it in middle school).

   Went on to the Japanese course to challenge myself with Hiragana, I learnt it durong covid just for fun, and I wanted to see how well I remembered it.

   One lesson brought to another and here I am, using wanikani and bunpro for no actual reason, but having a ton of fun

5. My wife is from there, and we are living in Chicago now, but we are planning to move there within the next few years. So I want to make sure I can at least operate at a conversational level by the time I get there, and then hopefully continue improving once I am living there. We visit for a few weeks every November, and it’s my favorite place in the world to travel to.

6. I only speak 3 languages yet

7. A bit bleak for me, but… While it might have started as a faint hope I’d one day be able to play video games and watch anime without needing subtitles, it’s turned into the only way I feel like I can better myself.

   With pretty strong social anxiety and between working full time & not having energy to go running do a sport or similar when I get home (amongst thousands of other excuses I keep making to convince myself they’re the real reasons), learning Japanese has sort of become my self-improvement crutch. Something I can do by myself, something I can slowly improve at, and if I only feel like twenty minutes a day, then so be it, it will wait for me.

   It’s ended up being the only thing I’ve been able to keep consistently motivated to do in what feels like a decade or more, so I’m keeping with it. It feels nice to want to improve myself at something for once. Little glimmer of hope I’m happy to hold onto.

8. The only reason I learn Japanese is sunk cost fallacy.

   I put 1000 hours into something, but unless i put at leas a 1000 more, I will have no return from it. So I just keep going,

9. Same reasons really. I wanted to know a second language and already had a bunch of Japanese friends in my social circle (I was a 90s kid living in east tn where there were a few big auto manufacturing plants and they’d ship in all these Japanese contract workers and their kids went to our schools in the neighborhood). Seemed like the logical choice for me. It’s hard af but I love it and with every visit back I have an easier time communicating.

10. To play Japanese games, watch media without subtitles and be able to communicate for my trip in 2026. It’s a hard language but a rewarding one even if right now I can understand a sentence or two if what I’m watching. Always was fascinated with the culture and the food and always will so why not try it right?

11. If I’m watching so much subbed anime, I might as well learn enough to the point where the immersion just lets me learn passively

12. I justified starting because I think I can afford to take a vacation there in just a few years, and I’d like to be able to get around without having Google translate open the entire time. But, really, I just want to learn it.
    I took a Japanese class the last year my school offered it. Spanish and French seemed like the boring “normal” classes to take, I took Japanese just because it was different. Since then, I’ve had an interest in the language.
    My life would be improved by learning Spanish. Plenty of people around me speak it. Japanese will have no practical benefit for me. It will be entirely useless. But the heart wants what it wants

13. So I can watch Vtubers without subs

14. Anime without subs was my reason at first. However the moment I started learning I stopped watching anime altogether for over a year because I got way too obsessed with the language itself I actually liked it more than anything else and still do.

    During Covid back in may 3, 2020 is when this happened. Finished my formal studies during the beginning of 2022 and ever since I have been just enjoying the language. Anime may have been the reason I got into it but I got so much more from it.

    – I got into jmusic
    – i got into manga
    – i got into light novels
    – sometimes I may read visual novels (can’t wait for 笑み男/emio)
    – I even got into some of the folklore and history
    – I got more interested in the culture

15. I consume a decent amount of japanese media and I have always felt bought the language sounded beautiful. I love the way it looks too. I cook a bunch of japanese food and intend to travel one day.

    My favorite class growing up was Spanish and I would be fluent if I stick with it past high school. Im going to go back to learning Spanish one day, but this is a goal I need to meet.

16. I am learning Japanese because I like how it sounds. At first, it was some kind of “self challenge”, “can I learn a foreign language?”. I chose Japanese for two reasons: the first, I mentioned at the beginning; the second, I already had been watching anime, so I added “to understand anime without subtitles” to my goal list.
    Simply put, I am very addicted to sounds, and that is what drove me to learning Japanese.

    Even though I don’t know if I will ever go to Japan, I am still motivated to learn the language

17. Two goals. One short term and one loooooooooong term goal.

    Short term I want to be able to understand anime and games. I often fall asleep watching anime but as I drift off I can’t see the subs anymore. Need to be able to listen. Also, some localizations for games are pretty cringe compared to what I’ve seen of the Japanese.

    Long term: Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami are my favourite authors and it would be great to read them in Japanese. So I’m in for that long term Kanji grind for Mishima.

18. Video games. Interacting with my favourite artists or streamers. And an extreme dissatisfaction with the way things are “localized” into English.

    And it’s fun.

19. It would be useful to understand what the misses says.

20. Honestly, my fiancee is from there, I only want to be able to speak it so we can gossip in public. And after a while, I can transfer to one of our work offices in Japan for a bit. I’ll admit it’s a tad superficial.

21. So that I won’t fail on my japanese class

22. I want to able to play videogames in Japanese! Also I’d love to read haiku and watch Studio Ghibli movies in their original language.

23. I’m in too deep to stop 😂

    In all seriousness it started for nerd reasons, but I genuinely enjoy the learning. I spend as much time in Japan as I can and it’s important to me that I can communicate. And I love reading things the way the author wrote them.

24. I want to travel across Japan without a translation app.

25. To play jrpgs in japanese, watch anime without subtitles, read manga in japanese and some day buy physical copies, to read japanese books, to watch japanese youtube, to speak japanese with a japanese person, to understand japanese lyrics in songs

    I wanted to learn japanese ever since livakivi made a video about his 600 day journey (and made me use the same method)

26. Because i enjoy learning it. I also at some point want to visit the Japanese countryside where not many people speak english so it would come in handy there, but with today’s technology it’s not really necessary. But yeah, the process of learning is fun for me, seeing progress and stuff. Even if i never actually need it.

27. its my hobby

28. Avoiding game occidental censorship and bad localization

29. I come from midwest in the USA from a time where no one knew anything about Japan except the products they made. In 1988 my friends showed me a really threadbare videotape of what was then called “Japanimation”. I grew up with a father who was a well known Comic Book artist at Marvel so it caught my interest. But what really intrigued me was the indecipherable language. A magic code that mixed english letters, two foreign alphabets, and Chinese characters. From then on I was determined to figure it out. Fascinating. Fast forward to the future and I have basically reached my goal working at a Japanese company for 22 years in Japan. But I still study as my interest never waned.

30. Im going to japan next year so i want to be able to somehow converse with japanese people and maybe i will be able to fix my life going there

31. To hopefully understand bands’ MC bit.

32. I wish I had a good reason. I’ve come to enjoy learning the language, so that can count for a current reason, but the only reason I originally started it because I wanted to try and learn a language from another part of the world and I was dumb / brave enough to select a language from the “hardest” category.

33. i’ve always liked the language, but it took my obsession with kingdom hearts to drive me over the edge and stick with it lol

    there’s so many things that didn’t translate well to english and i’m bound and determined to have full context for my fanfics >:l

34. Initially when I was a wee lad, I wanted to learn to watch anime, read manga and play games in Japanese, but now as an adult I’ve had a complete shift. Yes I still want to be able to play games in Japanese, however I also want to be able to interact with vtubers I really enjoy, work in Japan (hopefully in the future) and just be able to talk to people and learn about their lives. Plus when I was younger I was obsessed with temples and Shintoism even though I wasn’t part of the practice.

    I don’t want to visit Japan and feel like I’m being an ignorant and rude foreigner when going about day to day life. Gosh I could go on about my reasons… Japan’s always been a big special interest for me.

35. i just like being able to say dumb things in different languages.

36. I am learning Japanese by myself. It is one of my hobby, will help me a bit with learning Chinese, will help me on my future trip to Japan, and will bring peace to my mind.

37. I just started but I wanted a hobby so badly. So I selected learning Japanese. I thought I wouldn’t like it since it’s learning but when none is forcing you to, learning is actually kinda fun!

38. My motivation was to finish reading one book as only the first chapters were translated into my mother language (“Shinobugawa” by Tetsuo Miura, don’t read till the end btw). That was back in high school, so I chose Japanologie as a major.

    Since then I permanently learn cause I work with this language, still like their literature, enjoy kanji, natto etc.

39. I want to write / talk with natives, read mangas, read real text books, read the news, watch native material that doesn’t have subs yet, etc.

40. I’ve liked learning since forever, and I always wanted to learn a third language. I tried with many in the past but decided on Japanese since a big part of the media I consume comes from Japan, so I want to understand better the shows I watch and music I listen to. It was difficult enough to keep me interested, and it’s very rewarding to be able to apply it to the content I watch/listen to daily.

    I visited Japan for the first time this year, and I was able to get by without having to use much English at all, and it felt amazing to communicate even a little bit, so that gave me a bigger push to stay motivated for the next time I go. I want to be able to hold more meaningful conversations in the future.

41. Because I am a massive weeb

42. Masochism and self-loathing, mostly.

43. I started because I was bored. I needed a new hobby and most of my media consumption was anime, manga, and Japanese videogames (all in English).

    One day I just decided “fuck it, I’ll learn Japanese” and that was that.

    Later I moved to Japan so now that I live here (and plan to stay for good), I pretty much need to know the language to make sure my life isn’t miserable and I can be at least barely literate.

44. I like Japan and being in Japan. I have friends and connections there. But mostly because I spent so much time on it, it’d be a shame to let it slip again.

45. It’s fun, I like anime and games from Japan. I also keep flying out there every year so it’s handy to have a bit of knowledge

46. いつまで待っていても翻訳されない作品があるからです。結果はちゃんと出ました。

47. Got a job as an ALT, headed to Japan in a couple months. I’m hoping that knowing a little Japanese will make life easier there, it has helped calmed the nerves a little already.

48. To watch anime. …and Dramas but that’s all. Oh and Youtube videos/vlogs/Vtubers. Oh and play old gaming classics like the original pokemon games in Japanese, oh and JRPGs in general, there are so many… Oh and to watch comedy like 漫才 or 落語 and be able to understand and appreciate a new form of comedy with it. Oh and music, though there is still much to explore for me there. Oh and to read Manga in the original langauge, oh and light novels from anime that I liked and see how the story differs… and Visual Novels too!, it’s interesting to explore new mediums…!. Oh and to get into activities that is easier/more fruitful if you know Japanese like 茶道 or 書道. Also, there is much more going on in the Japanese sphere concerning games/sports like 競技かるた, 囲碁, 麻雀 or 将棋 and many others so it’s really cool to get into since it’s very limited in the other languages I speak. Oh… and of course to travel to Japan and eat at an old 老舗 and have an indetph conversation with a 地元 who is a regular there. Or to be in an insanely hot 温泉 and ask the natives timidly if it’s just my 外人 skin that cannot handle the hot water, only to hear from them that they too think this one in particular is really hot and then to lead to an interesting 20 minute conversation about all sorts of stuff between me and 4 other naked people in the midst of the night.

    Really there is a whole world out there, and in my over 2k hours I spent with the language I feel like I barely scratched the surface. I guess the “reason” for me is to explore this other world from the inside, not because it’s better, but because it’s different and gives me a new perspective.

    Hope that was not too corny 🙂

    Also thanks reddit for posting my comment twice, really well designed website.