Summoning @bunnypro and the rest of the Rabbit Gang! (I don’t take sides, btw. Possum, foxes, dog, cat, dragons, etc. I’m all for it! 
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Some of my others reasons include,
Learning it to speak to other foreigners without others understanding [that is, as long as I’m not in Japan]
Going off of the previous point, if I tell someone I know Japanese, I’m likely to get a surprised response, plus they’re unlikely to ever learn it since it’s so hard. For some reason that motivates me lol, feels good
It’s one of the most difficult, and I love mastering complex things.
Out of spite. I love doing self improvement, but also out of spite to others who don’t believe in me
I used to feel I was unable to learn hard things, but I’ve done hard stuff these past few years (designing my own CPU from scratch for example), I’ve been proving to myself I’m capable of doing anything I put my mind to
Learned Chinese before this but didn’t really vibe with it; Japanese I do vibe with (kanji isn’t too difficult to learn as a result, yay!); it sounds great, looks great, and for some reason is an absolute blast to use
I want to move to Japan, so I have a goal to push towards. I want to be fluent by the time I get there
So I can understand Japanese media natively, without subs (or things that have none)
Also I’ve grown tired of my home country and all the drama; at this point I’d rather trade my own country’s problems for living in Japan (even after knowing the downsides of Japanese culture). Making a complete change of pace in my life would re-invigorate me.
Cats. Japan understands my intense love of cats.
While this is not my reason for learning, goal, or motivation, perhaps at the same time I can find a wife, get married, and build my own life.
And what keeps me going on a day to day basis is my want to push against AI and all the people in my life who keep saying that AI will “replace” the need to learn other languages. Ugh.
Tbh, people who say this just sound purely lazy to me. They’d rather have something else do all the work than striving to learn, grow, and become better. That doesn’t sound like a very fulfilling life to me
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
Same here! I hate the pressure to get it perfect, and then getting corrected. (Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and place for that, but right now I don’t need that kind of pressure; I just want to improve at my own pace and enjoy it in the process)
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Yes! We rabbits (and select other animals) take pride in attracting people to the study of Japanese! 
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For personal reasons I live in Japan ie it wasn’t a life dream or anything like that. I can get by with daily interactions and even had a small chat with a guy from Osaka in an izakaya last week, but other than that, I kinda suck. Where I work, English is mainly spoken. At home, even though my wife is Japanese, we have a baby and don’t get much free time to do even relaxing things, never mind study. But a lot of job opportunities (and earning potential) is gated to me until I get better with Japanese.
So, the short answer would be ‘integration’. But having the capacity to learn a language while dealing with normal life is quite a slog.
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I’ve lived in Japan for over twenty years, and during this time I’ve just kind of muddled by with good-enough level Japanese. I’ve been able to secure several jobs, get married, buy a house and raise a family with my, frankly, mediocre level of Japanese ability. It’s not that I was against learning, just that I don’t actively enjoy studying and I was busy getting on with my life. However, since the political environment here has taken a decidedly anti-foreigner tinge recently, I thought it might be wise to learn to express myself better, not to mention be able to pass any language-requirement test that may or may not be required of me in future. That, and I was embarrassed by my poor ability compared to some of my friends who have been here about the same length of time as me.
So yeah - I’m mostly picking up on study because I’m being socially pressured into it. Eh, it’ll be good for me in the long run, if I don’t burn out on the way. I still find it incredibly boring, though.
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I’ve always been interested in Japan and it’s culture since the 2000s when 4Kids used to be around and anime wasn’t as big as it was now.
And remember even dreaming about moving to Japan, but when it came to the language. I didn’t bother, not due to thinking “oh, I don’t need to learn” but I had suffered with dyslexia (a severe one at that) and I could barely read an elementary school book in middle school. I did get that sorted out thankfully, but my main language had to be a bigger focus.
Now I am making it up now, but my reason is different? Am I still interested in Japan? Sure, do I want to move them? I would probably try out JET or other programs before making that big commitment because what I see online doesn’t apply when I don’t actually live in the country. I could deep love the culture, but not want to live there due to my personality or different views on things.
What I am studying Japanese for is to actually be able to play video game that never got an official English translation. Same for manga as well, and I’d like to learn a second language. I would like to learn Korean and Chinese one day as well, due to my interest in those culture too. But Japanese is my first focus for now and my reason may be small, but it’s enough to make me bother studying.
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It’s so interesting to see everyone’s reasons, they’re all quite different!!
For my part it started during my senior year of high school - a friend of mine introduced me to a Japanese drama and once I watched it I was struck by how beautiful the language sounded, so I started to have a desire to learn it. One year later I got a book to learn Japanese for my birthday but didn’t go much further than being able to say what my name is as I was quite busy with university at the time. Then, during my 3rd year of university, I had the opportunity to take a Japanese class for a semester, which I gladly grabbed. It was quite basic (hiragana, katakana, and simple sentences) but I enjoyed it. After this, university and life got in the way and Japanese was once again pushed into the background.
Fast-forward a few years - I was in the Japanese neighbourhood in Paris where all restaurants have hiragana written on the front, and I realized I could barely read them, which was such a shame after learning to in the past. I felt it was too bad that I had done that semester and never continued afterwards, so I decided to take Japanese on again, this time by myself. I did Duolingo, and then I bought books, and quickly started to learn kanji, and then thought I should take the JLPT as a goal and in order to test myself. So I took N4, and once this was obtained, I thought, “well after all this, I can’t stop, I’ll take N3”, which I did, and then N2, and…
In the meantime, because I was caught up in this studying swirl, I started talking to native speakers, and met my now Japanese husband 
so I guess this is an extra motivation now - as other people have said, it started as just a “hobby”, and now it is a really big part of my life. I have lived in Japan for several months, use Japanese with my husband and with his friends and family, and may move to Japan someday.
I still learn because I like the language, but I also think I need to be able to work in Japanese if we end up moving there at some point, and I need to be able to speak my husband’s dialect, and I would like to be able to use Japanese fluently within the family if we ever have kids (I would of course also speak my native language with them, but I want to be able to understand my kids as it would be part of who they are, and not be left out when there are conversations in Japanese).
I do get tired sometimes because there are ups and downs - sometimes everything is clear and I feel like I’m super pera pera, and then I’m going to read something or speak with someone and feel like I don’t know anything. But it still is an important language for me, so even if I take breaks in studying sometimes I know I will get back to it as I want to get better.
Talk about butterfly effect though, I never thought when I started learning Japanese that it would take me where I am now 
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