I’ve been studying Japanese for 10 years, and what has always struck me is the toxic and hostile atmosphere that permeated the community. People constantly tried to one-up each other: higher proficiency, more trips to Japan, longer time living there. Language exchange meetups often felt tense, especially when others noticed you had been talking for too long with a Japanese girl. You’d get looks of disgust or contempt.
I knew someone whose whole personality was built around being married to a Japanese woman. If you mentioned having a Japanese girlfriend, someone else would immediately claim to be dating two at the same time. No matter how married or partnered they are with Japanese people, they can’t be that happy if they constantly feel the need to prove their worth in front of others.
What’s particularly amusing, in an ironic way, is when people realize they can’t beat you on language skills alone and resorts to things like “Yeah, but my wife/girlfriend is Japanese” or “I’ve lived in Japan longer than you.” It disgusts me how Japanese people get objectified, as if status depends on how many Japanese friends you have or how much time you spend surrounded by them.
Interestingly, the most competitive ones usually quit while still at beginner or early intermediate levels. Having said that, I’m all for healthy competition, like motivating each other (切磋琢磨, sessatakuma). But I will never understand putting others down just to feed your ego.
Has anyone else experienced this? I’d love to hear your anecdotes.
by WorkingAlive3258
25 comments
Japanese language attracts a bunch of weirdos, I guess
It doesn’t really happen in real life, I feel. Met many foreigners in Japan and only 1 had a weird complex. He quickly went home because he got told to quit.
As to why it happens online, idk. I guess the same reason people are rude online in general.
Sounds super unhealthy, I would distance myself from those people
When I started uni I thought about majoring in japanese, after considering I went with other majors but kept learning japanese myself as a hobby. I genuinely thought the japanese major students would be cool to hang out with and learn with but I was mostly met with gatekeeping attitude and general cringe. One time in particular I talked with a lady that is majoring in japanese and has been learning it for six years and when I told her I was attending the N3 exam she gave me a sour face and this is also after I offered to hang out and talk to eachother to practice which was also met with just a weird responses.
I think that it’s a touchy subject to a lot of people because they take pride in their learning, here I thought uni was a place for everyone to chill (it’s not like there’s an employer out there for people who know japanese in my country)
Just weird man.
I do not have personal experience of it, but I think it is just that many people *really* like the language and culture.
For you to actually “learn” Japanese, you need to be very, very motivated. It cannot be much of a “chore” and it has to come from the heart to sit through things you might not be able to understand, when alternatives with things you do exist. It takes so much time and effort that those who do not have the interest to the degree, will be boiled away soon enough. It’s the reason why Japanese is so beginner-heavy.
This “beginner-heavy” is probably part of it. “You are not learning enough”, “you are using the language wrong”, “you are tainting *my* thoughts and feelings about the language, country, and culture, by being there”. Lot of it is just jealousy, but I believe most people – even through how much they do not wish to accept it, for such a thing is only a “those other people”-thing – are affected by this. Necessarily it is not bad (in fact, it’s very human and happens constantly), but the feeling can lay root to, as you mention: toxicity.
It’s not passion for language. It’s a fetish mindset with an individualistic twist learning a language or culture that is very much oriented towards group conformity. Just get over yourself.
Human nature paired with weebs. When elden ring dropped people were claiming you didn‘t beat the game, because you didn‘t use the ultra glass canon build and used a damn shield.
Its probably the delusion that only they can master japanese and be a naturalized japanese person, kinda like they would ”own” japan, if it makes sense. Then when someone else who is also foreigner brings up trying to master japanese or move there etc it breaks their delusional narcissistic view of the world and makes them hostile.
My theory is that because it’s a notoriously difficult language, it sits in this zone where it’s both popular and seen as hard, so some learners turn milestones (“I passed N1,” “I lived in Japan,” etc.) into a status badge and start policing who counts as serious or not. Just from personal experience, I feel that the worst gatekeeping shows up in spaces that are text-only, anonymous, and mostly about discourse instead of actually doing things in Japanese, which is a lot of the online communities out there. In-person classes usually stay way more normal because people have basic social consequences and teachers are focused on communication (however, I still noticed a weird air of elitism in my university classes compared to when I studied German, especially from those who came back from studying abroad).
In a lot of communities I found it’s just not productive to vent about something you found frustrating. People who know more will just dismiss everything or say you’re doing something wrong. It’s really annoying.
I’m in a Japanese School and we are all super supportive (help others, share anki deck, group studies, etc).
What I hate is people who are “sooooo fan of Japan since they are 5 yo” and that can’t put the most basic effort to learn the language. Those can’t be help and parasite a lot of japanese sub with nonsense posts.
I’m not sure of the answer, other than for some reason this language tends to attract a certain type of person. To avoid competitiveness or general feeling of failure I’ve found that focusing on what I love about the language and culture and sticking to myself seems to work best. I’ve stopped ranking and putting goals ahead, and instead just make sure I’m enjoying it every minute I’m studying or engaging with the language. For example, I primarily want the language so I can read, so I allowed myself to put that front and center and spend as much time as I can actually reading. Seems to be working because I’m making progress much faster than before (and able to increase my daily Anki reviews dramatically). My speaking and listening comprehension is lagging behind, but that isn’t the point. The point is I am still keeping it up and haven’t quit yet like every other time I’ve tried (other languages too).
It’s especially obvious on the various Japanese learning discords. I think the problem with Japanese is it’s very easy to produce “metrics” which justify your prowess i.e
– Number of Kanji learnt / kanji grid
– Number of grammar points learnt
– Number of books read / games completed
– Number of mature cards in Anki
Obviously you can do this in other languages, but due to the amount of technical support behind Japanese, it’s very easy to gamify / analyse your progress and therefore, showcase it.
For example, one of the Japanese language discords routinely has people list the number of completed books / games / etc in their names. On the surface it’s harmless but unintentionally, it is just one level of instilling a sort of _hierarchy_.
It’s extremely rare to see anyone describe how they _formed a genuine connection with people through the language_ which is somewhat telling.
Of course this is completely different in real life where there are plenty of actually _normal_ people who learn Japanese.
“Because japan is amazing and mine and I don’t want to share it with you” mentality with some.
While I was studying in Tokyo, I was the “leader” of the dorm that I lived in. It was my responsibility to take all of the new people to the Ward office to get all of their stuff in line(I got a bit of a discount on rent for doing it so there was some incentive).
There was one new kid who came to the dorm who was 22. When I met him, he asked me how long I had been in Japan and what level I was at.
The school that I went to had two course options once you reached about N4. You could take a slower paced conversation focused course, or a fastest paced college entry preparation course. I was in the slower paced course.
I will admit that during my time in Japan, I was enjoying my life a little more than I should have been and wasn’t focusing on my studies so I had ended up retaking two semesters because I failed the final test by a few points.
When I told him that I had been here about a year and a half and was around N3, he went “You’ve been here that long and you’re ONLY N3?! I’ve been studying online(this was during covid) for 6 months and I’m already at N2!”
I just gave him a thumbs up and a “Congratulations?” before going about my business.
The hilarious part was though that his pronunciation was HORRENDOUS. “Areegato gozaimasoo.” “Kore wa benree desoo.”
He left after about 6 months, complaining all the time that no one liked him and that he couldn’t make friends.
Japanese is by many metrics a relatively hard language fro English speakers to learn. It attracts a lot of intellectual snobbery, as some people see themselves in a particular light for learning the language well.
It’s also a somewhat niche hobby, compared to say, learning French or Spanish. Some people like everything Japanese to be “their thing” and become competitive or jealous when they come across other people who share this hobby, or who are perhaps better at it.
I think as a language it also tends to attract some socially awkward and peculiar people. Of course there is the ‘weeb’ stereotype, which I know is exaggerated, but it does exist for a reason.
I think there’s also socio-economic factors too. Having the time and resources to learn the language of a distant country is a privilege, and I think there’s some innate weird snobbery and hierarchy in the way learners behave with each other.
Because everyone wants to be the last samurai when they go to Japan and be the main character. If they see another baka gaijin it’s ruining their immersion.
And Japan historically has attracted a lot of odd people who don’t understand societal norms.
Many Japanese learners are a) socially awkward and b) define themselves and their own value through their Japanese ability to an unhealthy degree because they don’t have much else going on in life. So unfortunately many online Japanese learning communities are very gatekeep-y and all around unpleasant
Weaboo community has a lot of emotionally stunted people who never really learned a lot of pro-social behaviors, and end up acting this way. Most are attention starved, love starved, and learn about human relationships from Japanese cartoons, many of which have pretty confusing and toxic messaging about love and human relationships.
Many anime characters for example really emphasize being powerful and ‘the best’ over having a compassionate view of others. And quite naturally, the most villainous characters are often the loners and mistreated people whom these viewers most identify with. So even when a noble or heroic character might try to portray a kinder message, they tend to prefer the mean spirited and hurt villains, whom often crave validation and power.
I think in addition to this, they get a lot of flak for being fans of Japanese stuff, and so they tend to gatekeep not only their anime fandoms, but the entire Japanese culture. They see it as a thing they discovered, and since people often are mean and cruel to them for liking it so much, they’re distrustful of anyone who would also engage in it. It’s people with chips on their shoulders who feel like being interested and ‘good at liking Japan’ is their whole identity, and so they purity test others to see if they’re on the same level as they are, which being proficient in the Japanese language is seen as among the pinnacle buy-ins, because learning Japanese is hard.
From what I’ve seen, it”s mostly something online. Add in Reddit being Reddit… That’s the issue. You have a shitty subgroup of a subgroup that’s shitty in the first place.
In other words: I’ve taken a lot of classes offline, met other foreigners studying Japanese, and everyone is supportive. It’s only online that things seem crazy.
And again, considering the Reddit types… I’m not really surprised. I think a lot of it comes down to, we post on here as just a username with text. You forget that most users are actual people- not nearly as many bots as other parts.
I know a guy online who is getting his degree in Japanese Language and is currently in Japan on a study abroad program. I’ve studied independently for nearly 2 years now, and when I met him for the first time in a voice chat. He had seen that I had some Japanese in my bio, and instantly tried to one-up me by speaking very quickly with Japanese and then laughing when I didn’t understand what he had said.
We later got into a conversation about study methods, and when I told him about mistakes I had made early on as a naive learner (focusing on only learning kanji/doing zero immersion) he got all snarky and said that “we,” meaning people that study it in University, I guess, “always laugh at people like that.” I’m a Mechanical Engineering senior right now, and it frustrated me to no end that he talked down to me like this. God forbid some of us have to pay for our own schooling and go into a degree program that has any career prospects, and not get our college and study abroad fully funded by parents.
I don’t understand why some people that are enrolled in a program for language learning believe that it is the only way to learn, a lot of people I’ve met on the internet who have taken courses for it or are doing it as a degree are all so dismissive of self-study, as if them getting graded on what I see as a hobby makes them more Japanese.
There is a difference between online and in real life.
Online, people are liars. You’ll get people saying they went from nothing to N3 in 3 months and that N5 is pointless. You’ll get people gatekeep everything. They will say there is only one or two ways to learn and everything else is useless. Their whole personality online is being a liar and trying to sound like a Japanese God for some reason. It’s not many people, maybe just 1%, but they are the most vocal. Their obsession with Japan is crazy. The problem with online is they lying is easy.
In real life, I have hardly ever met anyone like this. I’ve seen s few though in Japan. I’ve lived in Japan 3 years and these people will think I’m a tourist and look at me like I’m a POS. If I speak to them, they’ll try and “out Japanese me” to try and one up me on everything to do with Japan. They suck. Every time they have been nerdy as hell white Americans. I’m sure other nationalities and races (and women too) do this, but I’ve never met any.
I think it’s the only thing they have. Online or IRL, their Japanese skills are basically their whole life and their whole personality. Online, they can lie and get fake internet points to feel better, which is weird but all trolls do it. Offline they like to feel superior.
Never have had anything like this happen. Although I don’t hang out with other “learners” so that might be related. I do know there is similar competitive attitudes for people learning English.
I find it a bit maddening about how I see sincere and meaningful questions about learning Japanese just getting downvoted relentlessly
I blame Matt vs Japan for a lot of elitism in the Japanese language learning community. I personally think his ego and mentality about Japan and Japanese has rubbed off on the Japanese language learning community.
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