What is your reason to study Japanese?

[BtheBee]

Hi, I am quite new to the community here an am a little curious why you decided to study Japanese and what you use as motivation.

As for me, I used to have a strong interest in Japan since childhood and eventually started watching anime and reading manga, which only strengthened that ambition. I originally wanted to do a program to learn Japanese and visit a high school in Japan after my graduation, but a certain virus cancelled that for me.
I then decided to study International Business East Asia in combination with Japanese at university. My study program included one year at a Japanese university which was got me interested about this specific program. But as I started uni, my interest for Japan started to fade suddenly. It was strange, because I used to be such a nerd for everything Japan related. I watched every documentary, went to anime expos etc. When I then lived in Japan for a year, it was all about surviving. Yes, my economics classes were in Japanese, too. I felt like I was only studying in order to not embarrass myself. Honestly, I also didn’t vibe with Japan that much either, but I think that is mostly because I rarely got time or energy to explore the beautiful sides. I‘m back in Germany now and I still feel like all I study for is to „not fail“.

I currently don‘t have any positive motivation for my Japanese study. It‘s only pressure, no love for the language or culture anymore.

So this is why, I want to hear your stories. I saw that there are some older topics about motivation etc. so I hope it‘s still okay to post a similar one.
I hope that we can share some positive perspectives here, some motivation and reasons to keep going., even though I don‘t plan to live in Japan for a long time anymore.
Maybe, your perspectives can help find a meaning in studying Japanese besides passing exams or JLPT.

Excited to read your thoughts!
~B

[Kronoxus]

Greetings from Poland!

Visiting Japan was my biggest travelling dream since I was a teenager. At 18, I had enough funds to do it, but mentally I wasn’t ready for such big excursion in my life.

As 2025 was coming to an end, I decided that 2026 will be the year of saving money for the trip, and I’m finally going to fulfill that dream in spring '27 (I will be 27 then). The idea of learning specifically Japanese was naturally born from that resolution, but I’m not learning it just to be able to communicate during my trip - let’s be honest: current AI translators can make you understand almost everything without putting an effort into learning.

My reason is broader, but I realized it a few days later. I need to have set a distant goal in my life. My life was always like this - no matter how long will it take to achieve it, but with such a goal I can keep wandering ahead, step by step. Learning a language, especially such a broad one like Japanese fits that goal perfectly.

Generally, I could say that the journey was always more important to me than the final goal - it refers to many aspects of my life.

[SarahSh]

Before going into my reasons for studying Japanese, have you considered if you have language learning burnout? I had burnout at my previous job, and it affected my motivation for working plus spilled over into a lot of other aspects in my life (the work environment was pretty toxic). If you think this might be true for you, then I’d suggest a Google search of the topic.
My motivation for learning is that my husband is Japanese, working overseas for a Japanese company. We will move to Japan at some point, and I will need Japanese language skills for everyday life. I also enjoy studying and like the structure of Bunpro and Wanikani because I feel that I need to learn and review a set amount every day. I will take the N3 at the end of the year, so that is motivation to keep going at a steady pace.

[BtheBee]

Thank you so much for your insight. I‘ve actually never heard of language learning burnout. I will totally look into that!

My fiancé is actually Chinese and working in Japan, so I will move back there too once I finished my bachelors this year. But we are currently trying to find a new country to live in, since he also doesn’t feel that comfortable in Japan anymore.

[cherry-chan]

My motivation is simply that I love everything about Japanese and culture. The way the language looks, feels, sounds, culture, and of course manga and anime. Also, I love learning complex things, and the feeling I get after I accomplish it feels amazing.

As for some additional information, I’m a programmer by trade, and burnout is actually a very common occurrence for us since our jobs are high stress and require endless hours of work (including in your free time), so this is something I’m intimately familiar with (additionally the fact that I get absolutely obsessed and engrossed in my projects).

It’s hard to get back into something (and sometimes you never can again!) if you’ve burned out. The best tips I can offer are to never get it in the first place; this can be accomplished by taking things slowly. Japanese is a marathon, so one should never sprint, but instead pace oneself by a little bit every day (according to what you can handle) and do things in a manageable size, that way you don’t overstimulate your mind. If learning the whole language feels insurmountable to you, limit your mind to only thinking about the here and now of what you have to do, ignoring the rest of everything else (as in, take it step by step and don’t think about topics/info you haven’t gotten to), that way it relieves the mind pressure of having to figure it all out immediately. For example, thinking of 1100 words to learn feels insurmountable to me, so instead, I’ll just think I only need to learn 10 today, and put it out of my mind that there’s 1100. 10 feels manageable (to me). When I look back in a month, suddenly 300 are already done.

Everyone’s different of course and can handle different levels of engagement, and only you know yourself and what you can handle, but the main point is limit yourself to only what you can handle and take things slowly but consistently. If it requires you to ignore certain things that would trigger pressure for you (like living in Japan and having the pressure of having to perform / overwork), they’re best avoided of course.

Wish you the best of luck and hope you can rest, heal, and reignite your motivation!

(Also, congrats on your upcoming wedding!)

P.S. you’d be surprised how fast taking only 3 steps a day takes you. Learning only 3 grammar points a day, once can finish N5 grammar in 42 days. That’s actually a fast pace, so even if you did only 1 grammar point a day, you can still do it in 4 months. Still not a bad pace at all

P.S.2. You’re not wrong about the overwork aspect of Japanese culture. It certainly can kill your love pretty quickly. For managing this, I’ve done extensive research on all the good and negative aspects of culture and come up with viable solutions to either solve/mitigate it and learn how to handle it. Some aspects didn’t bother me cause of my character, while others were a no-go, so I made sure they won’t be a problem, and others you just have to get used to (ask yourself, is this a problem for me, and if so, how can I deal with this aspect so it won’t drive me crazy). The overwork aspect is definitely one of the biggest no-gos for most people.

[Makishimu]

Hi,

I’m also new to the Bunpro community and I find this question really interesting! Like you, I’ve always had a certain curiosity about Japan, which I discovered when I was younger through manga and anime, but I never really tried to go deeper. It was only a few years ago, when I met my future wife, who is Japanese, that I started to take a more serious interest in the Japanese language and culture. I tried several times to learn the language, but since I was living in France and didn’t have a clear goal, I never managed to stay consistent.

For the past 7–8 months, I’ve known that I will be moving to Japan starting in February 2026, so I’ve become much more motivated and have been preparing as much as possible. I gave myself a clear objective: to reach the best level I can before arriving in Japan. After I move, I plan to spend a few months attending a Japanese language school and then look for a job there. That’s what truly gave me motivation (my future is at stake, haha).

Max

[brethelm]

I’d like to live in Japan for at least 2-3 years. Hopefully that will take the form of a work assignment with my present employer.

[lupine]

I’m half Japanese but I didn’t grow up living with my Mum (who is Japanese). So its always been kind of an embarrassment that I don’t speak Japanese (more so since my Japanese was better when I was four). I’m not really likely to need it practically but I would like to be able to connect with that part of my heritage without mediation through translation.

[xotlanc]

I love japanese, the feeling of progress in understanding of this very foreign for us westerners language. The feeling when at first I try to read manga and understand basicaly nothing, then after few months I can kind of painfully read it and then in a few months I’m able to read it more or less without any issues. It’s so rewarding for me to unravel all those hidden meanings that I cannot get from translated content.

I really like the culture, games, manga, anime etc. but it’s not blind love. I’ve been to Japan a few times and it’s a great country but I would not want to live there.

When it comes to learning I try to pace myself and spend roughly the same amount every day on it. That way I progress steadily without burning out. I also focus on spending enough of my learning time on the things I enjoy (manga, anime, games). Grinding grammar, bunpro or Wanikani is essential for progress but I would burn out without the fun part of getting to know new great stories (and it never ceases to amaze me how many great Japanese stories are out there).

[catpetter]

A European called me monolingual on Overwatch so I googled the most difficult language for English speakers.

[BtheBee]

Haha I love that

[timchenallen]

Pleasure to meet a fellow programmer! I just yesterday coded up a node.js/react.js app to help me learn regular verb conjugations!

[Minh_Nguyen]

Well, to be honest, each person has his/her own reason to learn Japanese. And if you do not have great motivation to learn Japanese, then you can just, erm, take a break. Why forcing yourself to do the uninteresting, unbeneficial things? Just take some breakand do whatever you like best, and maybe one day, you can resume your Japanese learning with a motivation.

[Saraph]

For a long time I kind of wanted to start learning another language, but I never really took it seriously enough. In the past I approached this in the most normie way possible for modern days - always fiddling with some phone apps for a while, then getting bored and quitting. It was a bit of Spanish, bit of Italian, bit of Russian, but for me, one thing these languages had in common was that I never really had any relationship to the countries or its media - it was just learning a language for the sake of learning some language.

Then later, I realized that to actually learn a language to decent level, you actually need to be continuously interested and invested in it, preferably for the rest of your life. Japanese fitted this requirement perfectly, because unlike any other language except my native one and English, I do actually like Japanese media how the language sounds. If I’d study a language, it might as well be one I can actually use to gain some extra layer of nuance from the content I already consume.

This content was mostly anime for me, but at the time when I started studying Japanese, I didn’t really watch it that much anymore, except some highly anticipated titles here and there. Learning Japanese basically rekindled my love for it, plus I also added a lot of gaming in Japanese to it. Even though I do SRS to some degree daily, I think I’ve now reached a point where I can basically just have fun and learning the language is a byproduct. Now I almost can’t imagine turning on an anime episode with English subtitles or playing a JRPG with English text & voice.

I know this text turned out to be longer than necessary, but I hope it did answer the question of why I study Japanese, at least partially.

[BtheBee]

I totally agree, everybody has there own reasons. That‘s also why I opened this conversation: curiosity about everybody‘s individual goal.

I‘m really not trying to copy anyone‘s plan or something. When I signed up here, I was amazed how many people study Japanese not because their curriculum forces them to. I‘ve been there, too. There was a time, I wanted to know Japanese without wanting to have good grades or anything. When I am reading through these messages, I actually got reminded of some positive things, that I connect with this language. I feel like I kinda lost my path a bit, and this helps me to find some of the ideas again, that I had when I first started studying.

I am really thankful for this community here. At my uni, it feels like we‘re all doing it for the grades now and that is not the kind of atmosphere I like.

I honestly really wish, I could take a break for a bit, but exams are coming up and once this exam season is over, I have to perform (or rather survive) at Japanese class. While reading these messages, I realised how stuck I am lately, but I gotta push through a bit more haha

[Minh_Nguyen]

Oh, so japanese is beneficial to you (as a test requirement), but not interesting. Haha, in that case, biting it is going to be tough. Then, just try to keep a daily japanese intake (10mins a day is fine). Doing some Japanese here and there, complete Bunpro reviews.

My own reasons for learning Japanese: At first, my wife made me learn it (she dont know Japanese, we dont even think about living in Japan anytime soon). But now, I have become so addicted to it from my forced routine and now my Japanese has become enough to read novel, I can’t stop.

So all in all, even if you dont like it, doing it daily can really help.

[adorable]

Always sad to hear when someone who has worked hard is feeling discouraged. Since you’re not planning to live in Japan at the moment, a change in mindset might help a lot.

For me,
It’s just a fun hobby. I have deliberately avoided spending much time engaging with others in the language because I don’t want to put pressure on myself to perform (sure I would get better through the pressure, but I don’t need it). If I don’t understand a specific and crucial phrase I don’t get into an awkward interaction so there’s no pressure weighing down on me.

I’ve been thinking about taking the N1 just because, but I’m not really studying for it. I tried a little bit here and there, but it saps the joy out of it for me and makes me think about things I can do to improve my chances of getting a very high score and not things I can do to have fun so I decided not to.

Perhaps you’d feel less pressure if you avoided all kinds of tests and social interactions for a while and just relaxed with entertainment media. I just do anki in the morning and then do fun things in Japanese, that’s about it.

After a long time of doing this you might feel a bit more relaxed about the language. So what if I mess up my alone hobby? It’s just a hobby. I tell everyone who asks about my hobby that I am pretty bad at it so nobody expects anything from me either 楽

[kushishekku]

My first reason is me visiting Japan for a conference few years ago. I hadn’t known almost anything about the country nor culture back then, literally just a few stereotypes. I was completely blown away, felt in love with the place. I have immediately felt more at home, more belonging there, than in my country, believe ot or not. I guess I must have been Japanese in my previous life, haha.

After coming back, I’ve started learning Japanese history and consuming its culture. And here comes my second reason, a friend sent me a youtube with a song „Hatachi ni nareba” by Yoshiko Sai, and once I’ve heard her singing, I just realised I must learn that language she’s singing in, it’s just too beautiful to die not knowing. She’s still one of my favourite Japanese artists!

[towaofsunz]

I liked everyone’s advice and reasons here. My motivation is just that I really want to understand it. There’s a whole world of untranslated content I’m missing out on, and I really want to read the works that changed my life in their original language so I can connect to them more.

I recommend trying to find enjoyable content in Japanese that you enjoy, something so fun it doesn’t even feel like studying. It takes a while but finding content you genuinely have fun watching has been a game-changer for me. For me it’s been let’s plays by レトルト and ジャック・オ・蘭たん on YT hahaha.
Now I find myself wanting to get better so I can understand them more.
If it’s a slog, you’ll just associate it with feeling bad. ): “oh god… I’m going to fail if I don’t study” can become “cool, I get to watch something fun today I wouldn’t have gotten to see otherwise!”

[torafugu]

The reason I study Japanese is because I love the culture, the food, and the vibe of Japan.
When I am feeling burnt out on Japan, I like to travel to a smaller city so that I can enjoy Japan again and talk to random people. Getting out of my usual groove helps me fall in love with Japan again.
Perhaps that is something you can do if you visit your fiancé. Perhaps talking to random people and enjoying Japan again will make Japanese/Japan fun again.

Best of luck to you and I hope you can find your inspiration again.