That’s depressing :o
But if you’re into dissuading people from attempting to learn Japanese, here’s an article you might enjoy (I got pissed at it, but ymmv): https://japantoday.com/category/features/opinions/why-you-shouldnt-learn-japanese
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“Resentment likes to have a company”. I don’t remember the author. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?
I hope you will overcome your struggles soon 
@NickavGnaro Why Japanese Sucks So Hard
This article was a selling point for me xD I started like a week after reading it.
Point 6 was critical xD
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Lol, wrong thread xD
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Some of the points in the article seem like they could simply be reworded.
“It takes a long time” - You will have a hobby for the next 10 years.
“Japanese can make you less popular” - You can interact properly with people and not as a foreign novelty.
Then there’s:
“Safe return doubtful” - You may only study for a while before moving on to something else. But by that logic no one would start any hobby or date anyone or do practically anything. I didn’t do it until I died so it was worthless.
“Opportunity cost”- Says you could learn guitar or go to the gym instead. As if no one’s ever quit those hobbies before or you couldn’t balance all three.
You really get the sense sometimes that people forced themselves through learning japanese, and then became bitter that their life was largely the same as before, that Japan and Japanese didn’t transform them somehow.
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If you apply strict logic to anything then best outcome always is: kill yourself.
There are more important thing than logic though: meaning, family, love, passion; just to name a few.
The Japan Times; the bastion of foreigners living in Japan who like to moan about Japan in English with other foreigners who like to moan about Japan in English. It’s essentially an online version of every town’s local foreigner pub with those crusty 50 year old kindergarten ALTs who unsurprisingly having never attempted to actually integrate whatsoever, are stuck indefinitely in phase 2 of culture shock and are resentful that, although they have all the answers to Japan’s ills, nobody will take them seriously. /vent
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Good to hear you have no hard feelings towards them 
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The statement he makes about not needing Japanese because most signs and menus have English on them is such a tourist attitude. I completely understand those bars that have “no foreigners” signs now. This genius also says that most people receive six years English education so they can communicate, but that speaking English is like a magic trick to Japanese people. Just imagine thinking this way about any other country “Once I move to Lithuania I’m going to be so exciting and exotic”.
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Well… My wife father - British person - spent 20 years in Poland, never leant even simple polish that would allow him to have basic conversation with any person not knowing at least a little bit of English. He could not get it, but he had wife and daughter here before he could notice it is not really possible for him. Plus his job was 100% in English.
I can understand that. It does not make him into bad person. He tried and failed, and was trying again and again when he could find time.
I will not make comparison if Polish is harder than Japanese. No clue.
Some things are not always possible for everybody.
Btw: his motivations to move in to Poland makes me laugh. He read some adventure book and decided to do something crazy with his life. xD why he was thinking it is crazy here I have no clue
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I don’t know about other people, but getting to a reasonably proficient point in anything does change you to some degree. I would say the people that feel they were not changed never actually reached proficiency… Or reached proficiency but have some unrealistic expectation.
It’s said that within within your lifetime, you have enough time to master roughly 7 things (truly master). I guess lots of people search for different things in their life, or have different amusements, but for people that love learning, a new language will definitely change them to some degree. I am far more confident in Swedish than I am in Japanese, so I will use that as an example. When I ‘mastered’ Swedish, it definitely did change a certain aspect of my life. Suddenly I was able to participate in a world that was locked to me before. A world of mutual understanding in another language, a cultural habit to see things in a slightly different way (just like Japanese, Swedish differentiates ‘know’ and ‘realize’ in a completely different way to English). A world of music and art, and subsequently the way a different culture holds different values or emotions in a higher place.
Then again I guess I contradicted myself. Nothing will ever fundamentally change you, or me. But this is a very western outlook. We don’t need to change, just grow.
だから日本語で誰かが可笑しいと伝えたい時に変わっていると言います。本物の自分に存在していないという意味を現す
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I got this idea within myself for long time, but recently I got a break through during apologising for misinterpreting somebodies words.
I finish with: Communication is hard as hell.
Got replay: Especially in foreign languages.
And then something click in my mind. Idea that I kept on repeating without truly understanding it (and not knowing it is the case…):
“”"
0_o this one remark helped my understand my feelings on intellectual lvl: learning foreign languages makes you into better person since it force you to understand how much empathy is needed, and how strong are internal biased you hold without even knowing. People not speaking foreign languages have hard time to understand that influence which kind of proves the point…
Maybe other polish people I believe to be morons the whole life, are not morons but different kind of people than me after all? xD
“”"
I “knew” it to be true, but did not really “felt” it.
I think I totally agree with you if I read you correctly
Edit:
Supporting my ethical claims with hard to understand quotes from best brains of our kind, always feels good so why to stop myself? xD
“Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves. Our longing for a friend is our betrayer. And often with our love we want merely to overcome envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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The change in your brain after learning a language is visible in brain scans. It physically rewires your brain. Code switching with languages is associated with perceived personality change as well.
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Learning to be and being taxi driver in London do the same to the brain
first result from google. I assume they prove my point but I can have to high opinion of them (or myself)xD
You can look for research paper, but you probably know that judging be your interests.
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I don’t know much about this field of study, but I would definitely believe it. By perceived, do you mean that the person thinks they changed, but they didn’t? or other people perceive them differently?
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I think it is easy here to confused two things:
- Ethical change
- With just a change…
People usually don’t like to look at themselves to notice small differences (just a change) and need big one (ethical) to become self-aware of that.
Our brains are stupidly complicated and there is no guide to it.
The person thinks they changed. I guess it’s difficult to design a study with other people’s perception on both languages.
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Interesting. Definitely sounds plausible, personalities are far more nurture than they are nature afterall. So learning a new language would adjust your nurture to a certain degree. Moreso for a language with drastically different cultural views.
there is a lot of study saying the opposite as well. Things like IQ or temperament is not really possible to change much in testable way. (you can learn to use it though)
Both seems to be true: you have stable self over time, and changing self
we are complicated. simply answers don’t work
In mythology metaphor of phoenix is being used here: you burn your self and get reborn all the time, so it is somewhat process of discovering who you are from psychoanalytical point of view (or rather can become). You are change, but still the same at the core.
I think that the simplest not obvious falsehood.