What's the Fascination with Japanese?

A few days ago I stumbled across (via AnimeYume) AJATT [All Japanese, All The Time]. I've been trying unsuccessfully to teach myself Japanese for a while now, and have no results to show. (Sure, I can read kana; I even know some grammar! Doesn't mean a damn thing for actually using the language to do more than fill in blanks.) AJATT -- and Khatz's fun-based methodology -- looks like a much better approach. Not just to learning Japanese, but to learning in general. (And job-hunting. And guitar practice...)

So, naturally, I started to implement it; I already listen to almost exclusively Japanese music -- not because it's Japanese, but because it's good. I watch anime (subbed and raw.) I don't actively watch English TV. My main exposure to the English language is written; and I'm waiting on Japanizing my reading until I'm done with at least most of RTK1.

I decided to share this discovery with my parents. "So, I found this really cool blog..."

Quoth my father: "What's with the fascination with Japanese?"

I couldn't give a good answer; settling with "I dunno, it's just... interesting." Which is bullshit, there are very good reasons that I know very well. Maybe it was the way the question was phrased, maybe it's my lingering doubts that I should even bother when I have other stuff to be doing. (What's some white dude in Virginia without a drop of Asian blood doing learning this anyway? Do you think you're Japanese or something? Pfft, weeaboo. [FWIW, Khatz-sempai suggests the second answer should be a resounding "yes."]) Or maybe I'm just spineless in social situations that do not involve a modem.

Screw. That.

So I'm going to list my reasons -- both as a post to point people towards and to confirm for myself that, yes, I do have business learning this language.

- Media/Pop Culture
This is the big one; the primary reasoning. I love Japanese rock music; J-rock is far more complex than your average American rock song. Lots of jazz changes, hell, lots of changes that are advanced for jazz -- they love the I-III-vi-IV-V progression. Some English bands do this: see Radiohead, Porcupine Tree, Rush, etc... but generally American pop music struggles to rise above the I-IV-V. (This could just be selection bias -- the best music leaves the country. What J-pop I've heard on FujiTV supports this. (Japan's currently at the mid-90's music-wise -- boy bands and girl-pop groups, eww.) Dunno, don't really care.)

I like anime. Mostly this is a genre thing -- show me an American TV show that relates to a beginning guitarist as well as BECK or K-On does. (No, seriously. If it exists I want to watch it.) Or a really well done slice-of-life mindscrew like Haruhi. Or Angel Beats, or... you get the picture.

There's more: Japanese comedy skits are pretty funny. Visual Novels are awesome (honestly, I want to learn to read so that I can get through all of Key's VNs. Clannad was amazing.) Manga... (I haven't read Negima since OneManga got C&D'd... all I can find are raws.) My best friend currently lives in Okinawa. I fully intend to visit her when I have work and can afford to. I'd rather the culture shock be a gentle buzz rather than complete alienation when I can't read anything.

- Kanji
A universal writing system for three languages? Completely eliminating the (written) barriers of technical jargon? Yeah, once you look past the whole (incorrect) notion of "Complex = Hard", kanji make a hell of a lot of sense. I want to learn a language that is this awesome. English has it's merits; logic is not one of them.

- Aesthetics
Japanese is a beautiful language. Seriously. Not just in writing, but it sounds pretty. I think it's the vowels. It's very rhythmic and bright. (On the other hand, spoken Chinese grates on me. Hard.)


Are any of these reason to learn Japanese, specifically? Not really, no. There's almost certainly good pop culture media to find in any language. There are plenty of interesting writing systems -- Cyrillic, Arabic. Other languages are pretty in their own way -- Russian, for example, is basically the diametric opposite of Japanese, very dark and moody-sounding.

Fact is, I could choose to learn any language (or not to, as it were.) But I've been exposed to Japanese the most. I'm a geek who spends time on the Internet; Japan is very prolific at exporting media -- whether they want to or not. It was inevitable I'd stumble across it. I've already picked up words and pieces of phrases by raw exposure. I enjoy it. It has potential to be useful to me in a variety of ways. Why wouldn't I learn the rest?