Would you study Japanese in order to become "self-sufficient?"

[animerunner85]

Hi guys,

This is purely a hypothetical question and something that I hope does not happen any time soon.

But if the Western anime industry were to somehow disappear and cease translation of anime, are you willing to begin a study of Japanese in order to compensate such a loss?

While I do have a little bit of Japanese under my belt (two years of study and JLPT 3 passed), I still rely on subtitles and I listen to a few dubs in order to understand most anime. But if worse comes to worse, it wouldn't hurt to be a little self-sufficient with the hobby and buy raw DVDs from Japan.

It's not a difficult language to learn, but it does take time and you will definitely need an instructor in order to do well in understanding it.

[BonifaceVIII]

Nah, if the time ever came that subtitled anime wasn't available (with the assumption that there would be no dubs either) I'd simply not bother to watch it any more.

It's not worth the hassle to learn a foreign language simply for the sake of watching movies.

[jlazar]

Oh, how I've tried... :(

The large pile of books and the course I took, but just couldn't absorb enough to continue it... all attest to my failure.

Maybe I was impatient and just didn't stick with it long enough, but my old mind just couldn't pick up enough to converse in Japanese or understand it in anime.

The best I've been able to do is learn a few words and phrases, plus i can almost count to 10.

So for now, I seem to be defendant on dubs and subs.


Still hoping to marry a Japanese woman and learn from her, but that's a long shot. Maybe during my next trip. :) :)

[Ryos]

Not specifically for that reason. Besides, even if the industry got to the point where no company would subtitle anime for domestic consumption, it'd just swing back to early anime fandom where just fansubs exist. :p

[Draneor]

But if the Western anime industry were to somehow disappear and cease translation of anime, are you willing to begin a study of Japanese in order to compensate such a loss?

While I do have a little bit of Japanese under my belt (two years of study and JLPT 3 passed), I still rely on subtitles and I listen to a few dubs in order to understand most anime. But if worse comes to worse, it wouldn't hurt to be a little self-sufficient with the hobby and buy raw DVDs from Japan.

My situation is not unlike yours (I took six courses of Japanese or two years). I can watch anime raw and get the general sense of what happens (same thing goes with reading manga and listening to drama CDs). Still, I currently require subtitles to help fill in my gaps so that I understand everything. It is hard to go back from being an educated adult who understands all the layers or meaning to an uneducated young child who only understands partly. But I'm only in year six of my fifteen year plan to achieve eight grade fluency.

This is one of my life goals. There is an entirely different world out there. Right now, I can only can a glimpse of it by peaking through the cracks in the wall. But I'll keep patiently chipping away the edges until one day I can walk through. Given the language environment I am in, I try to take the long term view.

[something]

I'd love to be able to even if the English anime industry doesn't collapse. It's just not realistic for me, though. I'd never get to a point where I felt comfortable, not unless I quit my job and dedicated myself to it full time. =/ I'll be shackled to a need for translations pretty much forever. I know small small bits and pieces of Japanese but not enough to follow an episode of anime.

[Glamrgrl104]

I agree with Boniface. I don't have time and energy to learn a foreign language just to watch movies. I would stop watching it altogether which most of the fans that watch it only with Dubs like myself would not bother watching it either. It'd be a big loss for anime companies to do that. This is just my opinion.

[animerunner85]

I agree with Boniface. I don't have time and energy to learn a foreign language just to watch movies. I would stop watching it altogether which most of the fans that watch it only with Dubs like myself would not bother watching it either. It'd be a big loss for anime companies to do that. This is just my opinion.
I see. Actually, the underlying point of the question was really to measure how much dedication you can put into anime if worse comes to worse. I'm sure the reactions would vary in terms of "should I let my hobby go?" or "maybe I should learn to language in order to keep up".

Everybody will have their choice if that time comes. ;)

My situation is not unlike yours (I took six courses of Japanese or two years). I can watch anime raw and get the general sense of what happens (same thing goes with reading manga and listening to drama CDs). Still, I currently require subtitles to help fill in my gaps so that I understand everything. It is hard to go back from being an educated adult who understands all the layers or meaning to an uneducated young child who only understands partly.
Yeah, two years is still not quite enough to really get a grasp of the language, although I think that does depends on dedicated you are in practicing. I think once you've mastered some of the basic-intermediate grammar type stuff, you can easily study on your own and build vocab or practice watching without subtitles ('slowmoing' the dialogue helps as well).

But I'm only in year six of my fifteen year plan to achieve eight grade fluency.
Wow. Wish you the best of luck on that. :)

[Suwako Moriya]

I've considered it, but I doubt that I have the motivation or ability to learn it.

[The Alaskan Assassin]

I wouldn't study Japanese for that reason. I would be studying japanese to finish learning. I originally wanted to learn Chinese, but at my college it was cancelled twice. I opted for Japanese. then i took a little more at my local college on my year off. I only have a year and a half.
Importing would be an entirely different manner. It would entirely depend on money. Sure anime is great, but importing is a damn expensive hobby. I'd probably learn where to find the region 3 stuff and know how to identify the counterfeiters in that region.

[ZenAmako]

These days, I primarily use anime and manga as study aids. I used to be a huge anime fan, but I mostly watch live-action movies (including Japanese movies) now for my entertainment.

It's interesting. Back in the day, when there was hardly any manga available in English, I longed for more titles to be translated. Now that a large selection of English language manga is available at any Borders or Barnes and Noble, I would rather read my manga in Japanese (even if I don't understand everything). Unfortunately, manga in its original language seems to be harder to find now in the U.S.

I do think that reading manga (in Japanese, of course) that has an anime version you're familiar with is a good way to pick up kanji and to build vocabulary. I've been reading through the Kimagure Orange Road manga (I'm very familiar with the anime version) and it hasn't been too hard for me. I've also found film comics (do they still make those?) helpful. (Film comics are color manga made with stills from an anime.) I used to not care about film comics, but if one comes from an anime I'm familiar with, I can fill in the parts I can't read from memory. The film comics I have also include furigana for all the kanji. I've already learned a bunch of kanji from reading Megazone 23 film comics. :)

[something]

Of course, if I attempted to read something like a Shirow manga it would probably be game over....
That's probably true for Japanese people too =P

[djanss]

In my day, junior, we HAD to: All anime was Raw.

Do ten years of subs and dubs make you "soft"?...You bet they do! :)
Tried watching some Ranma and UY with the removable subs off, to see if I still had it, and couldn't even bother to keep up--Can't believe some of us ever tried to get other friends hooked on guessing.

(...But then, I'm just a fan of progress.)

[Zalis]

Depending on the genre, I can follow raws fairly well, but I'd still rather watch anime in Japanese with good subtitles than raw. And by good, I mean "liberal" subtitles that resemble flowing, natural English. That's the downside of understanding some Japanese...you start to see that there's not a whole lot of diversity/variety in the original Japanese dialogue, and you see how important the subtitle translation is in making the content interesting.

[StudioZEL]

I'm studying Japanese so that I won't have a reason to get angry with subtitle I don't agree with. XD I'd still buy the American version of shows, but I'd just turn the subs off.

Also, I've got Japanese Famicom, Megadrive, Saturn and Dreamcast games that need playing. I gotta know the language to play them.

[Draneor]

Yeah, two years is still not quite enough to really get a grasp of the language, although I think that does depends on dedicated you are in practicing. I think once you've mastered some of the basic-intermediate grammar type stuff, you can easily study on your own and build vocab or practice watching without subtitles ('slowmoing' the dialogue helps as well).

Yup that's basically what I'm doing. I have the fundamental grammar down fairly well--it's the vocabulary that kills me. So I just try to expose myself to as much Japanese as I can.

[animerunner85]

Yeah, two years is still not quite enough to really get a grasp of the language, although I think that does depends on dedicated you are in practicing. I think once you've mastered some of the basic-intermediate grammar type stuff, you can easily study on your own and build vocab or practice watching without subtitles ('slowmoing' the dialogue helps as well).

Yup that's basically what I'm doing. I have the fundamental grammar down fairly well--it's the vocabulary that kills me. So I just try to expose myself to as much Japanese as I can.
You could break stuff down to maybe learning a set number of words each day; maybe 5, 10 or more depending on how quickly you want to learn. Knowing the vocab also helps with kanji memorization.

Also, if you can find them, there are clips and episodes of an anime called Sazae-san on Youtube. They're not subtitled, but it's probably the perfect show to watch if you want to develop your ear (simple, everyday dialogue).

[Quarkboy]

There's always been a catch-22 when it comes to learning japanese to watch anime raw:

It's almost never sufficient motivation on its own. Learning any language is a LOT of work. Unless you enjoy studying it independently from anime and manga you'll never spend enough time learning it to ever become "self sufficient" as the OP states.

I speak as someone who really did start studying Japanese 6 years ago primarily because I wanted to read the final volumes of Narutaru. And now, after having just passed the JLPT level 2 (1000 kanji, advanced grammar, vocab of 6,000 words) I can safely say that I really CAN read those volumes. But I would have never gotten to where I am if the only reason I was studying Japanese was because of that.
I simply find the language fascinating, and really enjoy the nuances and learning about the history and structure.

So anyone who finds themselves studying Japanese because they want to watch anime raw, stop and ask yourself after a few months: "Do I enjoy studying Japanese?" If the answer is "no, not really", then you might as well stop then, because you'll never get far enough.

[Classical]

If the circumstances were right, maybe I would be willing to learn Japanese to become "self-sufficient" in watching anime. As it is, I think there would be a lot of benefits to learning Japanese aside from being able to watch anime without subs/dubs. However, learning a foreign language is a big investment so I don't think I'd study Japanese, at least anytime soon.

[Ryos]

There's always been a catch-22 when it comes to learning japanese to watch anime raw:

It's almost never sufficient motivation on its own. Learning any language is a LOT of work. Unless you enjoy studying it independently from anime and manga you'll never spend enough time learning it to ever become "self sufficient" as the OP states.

More than that, if that's the sole reason you're going to learn Japanese, the Japanese used in anime/manga is full of vernacular language that would be out of place in much of proper Japanese, so even if you were to become versed in it, you would have to correct bad habits much like you would if you learned English through our cartoons and comic books. But again, this is under the assumption someone is learning Japanese specifically to better understand anime/manga in their natural language.

[Ty]

I would not study it simply to be able to watch anime. That may be part of the reason but I've wanted to know the language for a long time. It's part of a long standing dream I've had that I won't go into. It would certainly be nice to be able to understand without subtitles, but that shouldn't be the only motivation.

[HitokiriShadow]

I'm in the process of learning Japanese right now, but while being able to watch anime and read manga/novels raw is a future byproduct of the process and provides some incentive, its not the goal. Even if the R1 industry tanks, I'll still be able to watch most series, so that won't be a problem. Not being able to buy the series I like would certainly be a problem, but learning Japanese wouldn't fully fix that problem because R2 DVDs and JRA BluRays are simply too damn expensive.

In the process of watching thousands of episodes of anime subtitled, I've picked up a few words and became interested in learning the language. I've been taking it for over a year now and I've found it very interesting to learn and that I'm doing a fairly decent job of picking it up. While I'm majoring and minoring in other things (because they don't offer enough Japanese courses to even offer it as a minor), Japanese is what I'm interested in the most and what I intend my future career to involve.

[Njr Scrawl]

Oh, how I've tried... :(

The large pile of books and the course I took, but just couldn't absorb enough to continue it... all attest to my failure.

Maybe I was impatient and just didn't stick with it long enough, but my old mind just couldn't pick up enough to converse in Japanese or understand it in anime.

The best I've been able to do is learn a few words and phrases, plus i can almost count to 10.

So for now, I seem to be defendant on dubs and subs.


Still hoping to marry a Japanese woman and learn from her, but that's a long shot. Maybe during my next trip. :) :)

To a greater extent, that's my position & feelings as well.

I always remember Father Alvito in James Clavell's Shogun saying he had lived in Japan since a boy, for 14 years, & had only learned the rudiments of the "Devil's own language".

What I need is Lady Mariko as personal tutor for 6 months (or more) ^^, to get the same help Blackthorne did!

[a fist of JUSTICE!!]

No. I don't have the motivation nor time to learn a language for the sole purpose of enjoying its media. Hell, I don't have the motivation to learn it at all.

[GundamWingMan]

Why bother? That's what subtitles are for. But I'm lazy and prefer dubbing if a show provides same. Heh!

[something]

Why bother? That's what subtitles are for. But I'm lazy and prefer dubbing if a show provides same. Heh!
The premise of this thread is "What if there were no translations (including subtitles) anymore?" Granted, there's a huuuuge difference between "no official commercial translations" and "no translations, full stop", so it's not like we ever need to worry about never being able to see anime in English. Thus, the question is entirely hypothetical. It's just a matter of whether we'd be able to buy anime in English.

[Suwako Moriya]

Not being able to buy the series I like would certainly be a problem, but learning Japanese wouldn't fully fix that problem because R2 DVDs and JRA BluRays are simply too damn expensive.

That right there is the key. Truth be told, even though I do not understand Japanese, I have been willing to watch some series raw. Even if it means having to guess what's going on. So my R2 hesitation has come more from the cost than the language barrier.

Hence if R2 became my only option. I'd end up being ultra selective about which series I buy. Simply because I'd have no choice, but to be selective due to the limits caused by reality. Then again in a scenario where R2 became my only option, I might reach a point where R1 is no longer a competing factor.

[JCDenton]

While I doubt it would come to that point, I am taking my first Japanese course in college, so it's too early to say whether or not i could attain sufficient listening and comphrehending skills to do so, but if it's within the realm of possibility for myself, I'd throw myself into it.

[Mr. Nail Bat]

No way.

To me, learning a language is (if you'll excuse the phrase), serious business. Learning a language because use of that language will be part of your vocation is a good reason. Learning a language because you are or are going to be immersed in that culture is a good reason.

Learning a language for entertainment purposes is, in my opinion, flaky and a waste of time. If I were going to learn a language just so I could read the literature of another place, I'd learn ancient Greek so I could read Homer in the original.

[memyselfandi]

Would I learn Japanese just to be able to still watch anime and read manga .... no.

Would I like to learn Japanese .... yes, (unfortunately; do I have any ability to learn languages .... little, as my school grades in French and German show).

[Thanatos]

It's not worth the hassle to learn a foreign language simply for the sake of watching movies.

I did. Anime, manga, and videogames are the apex of Japanese culture and all it has to offer the world (ok those, and extreme bondage porn.) If you're not going to learn the languge for them, there's no reason to other than well, having to learn the language because you live there and aren't a native English teacher.

Language learning takes a tremendous amount of time and energy, which is why other than language nerds, most people learn only the minimal amount of languages they need to survive (typically one.) Most people also tend to study languages incorrectly - namely just reading boring-ass textbooks, and give up without ever acheiving any degree of fluency.

[BluWacky]

Learning a language for entertainment purposes is, in my opinion, flaky and a waste of time. If I were going to learn a language just so I could read the literature of another place, I'd learn ancient Greek so I could read Homer in the original.

Given that I DID learn ancient Greek so I could read Greek literature in the original (not so much Homer, as Homeric Greek is a bitch and I'm not much of a fan of war epics - the Odyssey's good, though) I don't have a problem with this concept at all.

I will freely admit that I started my very haphazard study of Japanese because of anime et al. However, with any such study comes a broadening of horizons - now I partly think about how awesome it would be to read, say, Madame de Sade in the original.

As it is, with the way the Western anime industry is going and the interests of online fandom I fear it will eventually become a necessity for me to get more serious with my study if I want to stay interested in anime. Frankly, the shows I like don't get a R1 release and quite frequently are very sparsely fansubbed, so full on immersion may end up being the way I end up going.

(or I'll just give up the hobby entirely and do something different with my time. That would be easier!)

[einhorn303]

I'd rather spend the time learning to draw, write, and program better in order to grow and develop otaku culture in the English-speaking world.

[meganly_chan]

I've tried, goodness I've tried. I bought books, even took two semesters at college, went to a Japanese book store and tried to find some elementary level learning material. And though I've caught on to a few things (I'm surprised by how much I can understand when watching RAW), I'm just too stupid/slow to learn another language ^^;

I think my best bet is to find and marry a Japanese man. It's perhaps an impossible dream but I dream about it often anyway *sigh*

[Asf]

I really should make a website for dumping thoughts like this onto rather than barfing all over forums. I cerainly don't blame anyone who pagedown's past all this. :D



Would I have learned Japanese just to understand anime?
I’m not sure, really.

Would I have learned Japanese for the sake of all of the following?


console games
Windows games
anime
drama CDs
net radio shows
doujin/indie works
song lyrics from music from of all of the above
comic books
magazines, everything from news content to comic/novel serialization
novellas, light novels, and novelizations
non-fiction essay books, biographies, otaku culture commentary books, art books w/interviews, guide books, etc.
every miscellaneous little bonus item attached to all of the above
effortless navigation of Japanese online stores, including official download sale sites and streaming rental sites (Heck, I could go on for pages about all the stuff available on official Japanese download/streaming sales/rental sites. Describing the volume available on English language sites like Hulu/Joost/Crunchyroll or iTunes U.S.A. as “sparse” in comparison would be a serious understatement.)
official websites/blogs
the ability to write fan letters to authors/artists/actors/whoever, to write emails to radio shows and have them read on air (Thanks, Momoi!)
the entire Japanese online fan community, everything from blogs to Niconico to 2ch—as a participant, not an observer
etc. etc. etc.


HELL YES. I would, and I did. That was 15 years ago when I really got started, and it was the best thing I ever did. Also wound up falling into making my living as a translator as a side-effect.

It’s difficult to even put into words just how much anime/comic/game/character related stuff is produced every single month in Japan. Hundreds upon hundreds of magazines, books, and comics, dozens of BD/DVDs, CDs, and games. Weekly net radio shows. Countless official website updates and creator/VA blogs. I keep trying to write a small summary and every time it balloons into pages of text to cover it all. Maybe photos of the inside of Akihabara stores would be better way to express the scale. Only the tiniest fraction of that will ever wind up translated into other languages. If you don’t know Japanese, not only will you never get to experience the remainder, you’re unlikely to even learn of its existence.

And so much of it is interconnected. One single property will have an anime, two novels, three manga series, a couple of video games, a side-story novella running in one magazine, a 4-panel comic running in another magazine, an official blog, video interviews with creators and VAs posted on animate.tv, an adventure game for Windows downloadable from the website if you enter the serial number found on vol. 3 of the character song CD series. If you know Japanese, you’re never starved for more material related to your favorite story and characters—you’ll be drowning in it. Even more importantly than that, if you like one thing by a particular creator, you can easily explore that creator's other works—no "whoops his other stuff isn't translated, too bad."

At a fundamental level, any time anyone in any way associated with making the stuff you like speaks or writes anything at all, they’re creating more Japanese that would have to be translated for you.

Oh, and the size of the Japanese online fan community! That “obscure" manga author that no one else on your favorite English forum has heard of has a thread on 2ch dedicated to him containing 17,000 posts and counting. You don’t go “hunting” for fellow fans of a particular work on the Japanese side of the net—you simply take it for granted they exist. (That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the hundreds of thousands of posts per day made to 2ch’s anime/comic/game related boards is not. Not to mention the Japanese blogosphere...)

And of course, with that massive fanbase comes the massive doujin world—500,000 people visit Comic Market twice a year. Even the San Diego Comic Con (126,000) doesn’t come close to that, and conventions like Anime Expo (43,000) are even smaller.
That’s a whole other universe of creativity in itself.

If you have more than a passing interest in the bigger picture of the creative subcultures and media-mixes intertwined with animation, comics, games, and character-culture in Japan—and especially if you want to connect with the human beings involved, both creators and fans—becoming fluent in the language will completely change your world.

[Asf]

Whoa, haha, wasn’t expecting mod-intervention. Probably good I looked at this thread again before replying. I guess I shouldn’t comment directly on the actual text of that post (http://www.mania.com/aodvb/showthread.php?p=1540169) here as that would effectively go against the mod decision to move it out of this thread.

I do think it brought up some interesting topics though, probably the most significant in the context of this thread being the idea that studying Japanese primarily/entirely for the sake of “otaku” hobbies is shameful, even amongst fellow fans (as opposed to simply wanting an excuse to tell "normal people"). I’ve seen this sentiment on forums quite a few times, most frequently from students themselves seemingly feeling a need to provide additional justification for their studies.

I spent a while thinking about this but I can’t quite figure out why there’s a special shame attached to studying Japanese for the sake of Japanese cartoons/comics/games within a subculture that’s theoretically already accepted the idea of being a fan of Japanese cartoons/comics/games. The strong negative reactions from peers are I assume an embarrassment-by-association thing but I can’t seem to pin down the origin of the embarrassment.

I think it comes from the idea that, when a Real Japanese Person™ (including Japanese language teachers), curious about your Japanese studies, asks you “why are you studying Japanese?” you need some sort of cover story so as not to bring up your anime/manga/game obsession in front of normal people (which would embarrass not just you, but the entire world of Japanese language students, which any member of said collective automatically represents any time they interact with Real Japanese People™) but if you literally only know about anime/manga/games, then you won’t have anything in your head to support your cover story.

[Buster Darkwings]

I'm pretty much the same as you (although it's only been 13 years since I started learning the language in my case). I too have got a job translating, and while much of my waking hours are devoted to my obsessions, I don't really feel like I'm missing out or should be ashamed by not getting more involved with other aspects of Japan.

I've got a girlfriend who enjoys watching many different types of anime with me, a decent paying career, and a rather satisfying life. Why should I care what others think, especially trolls who come here only to get their posts deleted?

[Draneor]

I think it comes from the idea that, when a Real Japanese Person™ (including Japanese language teachers), curious about your Japanese studies, asks you “why are you studying Japanese?” you need some sort of cover story so as not to bring up your anime/manga/game obsession in front of normal people (which would embarrass not just you, but the entire world of Japanese language students, which any member of said collective automatically represents any time they interact with Real Japanese People™) but if you literally only know about anime/manga/games, then you won’t have anything in your head to support your cover story.

I admit I always hide my hobbies whenever I was in Japanese class or am around someone who is Japanese. On the other hand, I don't hide it at all when I speak English (my office is filled with moe shitajiki and calendars). I'm not sure why I do in a Japanese context. It's not technically a lie to say I study Japanese because I like "languages in general." I do. But I guess it's not the whole truth either.

[something]

The strong negative reactions from peers are I assume an embarrassment-by-association thing but I can’t seem to pin down the origin of the embarrassment.
Yeah, seriously, don't worry about that crap. They're just being insecure about themselves.

Learn any language you want for any reason you want. Nobody else's approval or blessing is needed. What anyone else thinks does not matter. If you're doing it with your time and your dime and your sweat and tears, others don't get a say.

And honestly, discouraging bi-/multi-lingualism in today's world for any reason is just absurd. I don't and never will know nearly enough Japanese to ever consider myself bilingual, but every time I see or hear a common phrase and understand it, or am able to stumble through a Japanese website and find what I'm looking for, it feels really good. Who cares if the only things I use my tiny Japanese skills for are almost all related to my hobbies?

Honestly.

[Glamrgrl104]

I might someday want to actually learn Japanese or any other language, but I am just not one of those people who can learn a foreign language easily. I took two years of Spanish in Highschool and I don't remember most of it. We just learned to cook Spanish food heh.
Maybe if I wanted to work in Japan or like some of you were a translator; I'd give up four years learning just Japanese. But yes I would not learn Japanese just for the sake of my anime haha.

[Asf]

I admit I always hide my hobbies whenever I was in Japanese class or am around someone who is Japanese.
I think that’s normal and I do the same. On a forum like this, with a user name that no one who knows me personally knows about, I’ll gush enthusiastically like I did in this thread, but I’m not the type to start some kind of pride movement in public.

But danboardDX’s reaction—and it’s by no means a unique opinion, which is why it interests me—seems to be more than just “don’t go around telling normal people that.”

I’ve been pondering this some more and think maybe I’ve got a real working theory now.

___________________

Amongst other things, danboardDX said, “you [don’t care] about the normal, everyday 'non-otaku' Japanese populous” and “there is so much more to the country other than games and anime.”
The question is, why, amongst fellow anime fans, would someone whose only stated interest related to Japan is comics/anime/games and is studying Japanese to enjoy them be derided for the above reasons, yet someone who states the same interests and is not studying Japanese would not? The latter is ignoring “the rest of Japan” just as much.

I don’t think it’s because of increased accessibility due to knowing the language. An English-speaking American citizen can make the statement, “I love British comedy shows” without being challenged for not showing interest in other British things, despite there being no language barrier.

On the other hand, if an American citizen moves to the U.K. primarily for the sake of access to comedy shows, I think we get something comparable.
Both that and studying a foreign language have two things in common:

They require a significant amount of effort.
They necessarily expose the person to many aspects of life in the country in question.

(As a side note, #2 explains why the issue in the bolded question above is specifically “ignoring the rest of Japan” rather than “ignoring the rest of planet Earth.”)

#1 should give you a desire to get the most out of your investment, and #2 should have allowed you to encounter so many other things from the country in question that surely you’ll find something that’s…well, you know, better. Because cartoons, comic books, and video games (and comedy TV) are inherently worthless, frivolous, and generally a waste of time, and if you were to say that those things are in fact what you find the most appealing of all things that you have encountered during your long study of Japanese, then you are effectively saying that Japan has produced nothing of real value, which would be shameful for anyone to agree with.

Because if you were to say, “I studied Japanese due to my interest in classic Japanese literature,” and went on to describe how wonderful said literature is, no would feel compelled to ask what’s wrong with you for not also, in the same post, explicitly expressing interest in some other aspect of Japan. Because classic literature is respectable. Otaku hobbies are not.
___________________


I’m going to have to disagree with the above line of thinking due to the actuality that otaku hobbies are in fact frickin’ awesome and are great reasons to study the language and not something anyone needs to feel ashamed to post on an anime fan message board.

Though if any normal people ask, I originally started studying Japanese for the sake of miscellaneous hobbies I had when I was younger, but now use it as a tool for work. :shy:

[Thanatos]

Again, manga/anime/video games are the apex of Japanese culture, ergo passionate devotion to them at the expensive of everything else isn't only justified - it's the only rational choice.

But it's not your job to make the rest of the world agree with you. If non-otaku don't understand, that's their own damn problem.

I think this article about "emotional backbone" applies here. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/03/japan-to-you-who-will-graduate-this-year/

[Njr Scrawl]

If I could afford Japan, & lived there, I would be strongly motivated as I would want to talk to, understand & learn about Japanese society, history & to converse fluentlywith its people. Being very western in appearance & tall, I would always stick out, but to have respect from another nation's people for how well I speak their language & understand their customs etc would be terrific.

[Isuzu Inugami]

Again, manga/anime/video games are the apex of Japanese culture,

Hey! There's enka too! :catgirl: