I already posted my reasons in your thread in GI, but I'll copy-paste it here so people in this guild can see it:
At first, anime and manga were my main drive in learning Japanese. Unlike weeaboos today who just pluck random Japanese words right out of anime they watch, I paid attention to necessary vocabulary like greetings. Before I took a formal Japanese class my first year of college, I had already knew all the basic Japanese greetings because they're uttered all the time in Cardcaptor Sakura. I also paid attention to speech patterns and noticed how they differ between male and female, different age groups, and social levels. For example, a male character would speak rough around his buddies, but switch to polite form when around authority like a teacher (unless the character's the type of guy who speaks like a 'scrapper' to everybody). However eventually, I began to take interest in other aspects of Japanese culture, like their tea ceremonies, their history (even if they've committed war atrocities, I still admire their history, especially the periods before the Meiji Era), their mythology, etc. My favourite subject in college ended up being Japanese because I loved it so much and I even considered majoring in Japanese (but because I wanted to branch out to more than just Japan, I'm majoring in East Asian Studies. I'm thinking of double-majoring in EAS and Japanese, though).
I think I recall you mentioning a few times in GI that you live close to Albany in New York, right? I typed "Albany demographics" onto Google and came across
this. The census is old by 10 years, though. The most recent 2010 US Census Bureau concerning the entire state of New York says there's 0.2% Japanese people living there. That's not much, but there are a few Japanese people here and there living in your state.
Reply
