Fascinating title but to the point. In case your a little slow I have just created a new news category for Japanese related articles titled, wait for it, "Japan". I can tell you dying to know why so I shall enlighten you. Quite simply put I have an interest in Japan and Japanese Culture and have done for some time, however only of late has it become more interesting to me.

Any tech loving, gaming kid grows up with idea firmly implanted in his/her mind that Japan is akin to nirvana for both gaming and technology. When I were but a lad, not so long ago, I was quite into games. Not so much now (perhaps through lack of time or better things to do) but it leaves a lasting impression on you. Pretending to be a short, moustache-touting, mushroom eating plumber leaves a lasting effect on anyone to be fair.


As a keen reader of the official Nintendo magazine back then, it didn't take long to work out where the best games were coming from, plus every now and again they would throw pictures of Japan in or perhaps an article with one of the Nintendo staff who was perhaps not surprisingly Japanese. Anyway, perhaps subliminally "Japan" had been implanted into my mind. It wasn't just a liking for Nintendo games though, a few TV programs I saw as a kid that often showed technology that was better than anything in England at the time also sparked an interest.

I remember one day, many years ago when I was at college. A fellow student was trying to sell on a phone, I don't know where he got it from but it was without charger or box so your guess is as good as mine. As if the missing charger wasn't a problem enough, there was also another snag, the phone was Japanese. As the fellow student was trying to sell on his wares I had a little play with the very small device. Now you have to remember that at this time, phones had black and white screens! I was amazed with this small device which I estimated to be around two maybe three years ahead of the phones in England. It had a large colour screen, it played music, had a memory stick and even had a camera. A camera on a phone I thought, what madness was this? It was like being given a glimpse in to the future as I didn't even know these phones existed. I didn't buy the device but I did get the model number and checked it out on the internet. Yep, these phones were pretty common in Japan. I wondered how Japan had silently passed me buy with such interesting devices. I decided that one day it would be nice to visit Japan.

Anyway, I'm older now and gadget's don't interest me as much (he says with surrounded by 770 Internet tablet, iRiver OGG player, Sony Ericsson K850i phone with another phone on it's way ). Anyway, the idea of going to Japan is still set in my mind. For the benefit of those of you who don't know I find other languages fascinating, not so much the words but the way in which they are structured. This is most likely linked to my interesting in programming languages for the same reason. One thing I have always wanted to learn from an early age is another language. At secondary school (high school) I was supposedly taught German. I say "supposedly" because you can't teach me something I don't want to learn. Back then I wanted to learn a language that interested me and German wasn't one of them because it seemed too similar to English, a change of some similar sounding words and a sprinkle of a different sentence structure and your done. Nope, not interesting enough, not challenging enough. So years later and not a few months ago the idea of learning Japanese popped into my head. This was nothing special, I consider a new language every now and again, research it, find I don't like it for reason X and forget about it. I did a bit of background research into Japanese, it looked interesting. Very interesting, quite complicated but I like a challenge. The biggest attraction of Japanese however was it's logical workings (yes there's lots of illogical stuff too). Word modifiers are a great idea when I was developing my own language for fun I used such a system. A few months lately and I'm still learning Japanese albeit, slowly when time permits. I'm still finding it fascinating and have discovered that learning a language also means learning a culture. Every learning material details items about Japanese culture so you have no choice but to learn of it. This really got me interested in Japanese culture, I wasn't before as I had no knowledge of it but the more I learn the more interesting I find it.

With this new interest I began to expand on it. Firstly I was curious as to what Japanese western styled music was like. Much to my surprise some of it is great I love music, especially discovering new bands/artists that I like. Well all of a sudden a flood gate had opened for musical exploration. Hidden artists are hidden no more just difficult to find.

Next up anime, well didn't expect much here. I have always avoided anime like the plague, my opinion of it was a cartoon style with a cult-ish following of which I didn't understand. There are few cartoons that interest me but it was a good chance to hear some Japanese conversation so download some I did. Now I didn't do any research before downloading, I had a strategic methodology of picking whatever my mouse cursor landed on from a list of torrents. The first anime series I downloaded was called "Narue no Sekai". Well, this was odd, scary, sometimes funny but mostly odd. I stuck with it two the end, it wasn't really my thing, but I could see a difference from English cartoons. Anime seemed to be less childish and more focused on delivering stories and sometimes great stories Anyway, next came Fate/Stay Night, still haven't finished watching that but, woaa I love it. Yeah my secret is out Then came the torrents, Ghost in the Shell and so forth. Currently watching Death Note at the moment, it's excellent. I no longer see anime as a cartoon but simply another medium in which to tell a story and a powerful medium too.

Anyhow, I think that about wraps up my very long winded explanation of the apparently sudden interest in Japan, Japanese language and Japanese culture I have adopted

4 Comments

Dugahole Location: Ballarat, Victoria, Australia Joined: 27/03/05

I learnt Japanese for one year at high school and my teacher was forever telling us students that English is the hardest language to learn and Japanese is very simple once you get your head around some rather complicated processes... needless to say I couldnt get my head around the complicated processes to get to the easy stuff. I also learnt Mandarin for 3 years and have forgotten all of it, too bloody hard. I learnt a strange language called Suaren too, it was interesting but I think everyone who spoke it lost interest....or did they?

Chris Location: West Midlands, UK Joined: 24/03/05

You learnt Japanese for a year! I'm envious we only had a choice of German and French. Mandarin sound very hard indeed. Can you remember any Japanese? Ah yes, Suaren. I'm surprised you remembered it Um, what did happen to that I wonder? Perhaps the realisation that if I want to learn another language I may as well learn one that people speak and that if I was really serious Suaren I'd have to learn another language to gain an "outside" perspective of English.

vortex566 Location: Joined: 07/06/07	We are going to Japan it will have the edge. I find anime to get and better the more I watch. I do feel that some of it is a bit over the top for my liking but death note really is a cut above the rest along with Chobits and Fate Stay Night

Dugahole Location: Ballarat, Victoria, Australia Joined: 27/03/05	I can't remember much Japanese no, I cant remember characters or anything like that because I just memorised it phonetically. I still passed the year though Suaren was good though, very easy to learn and you could say pretty much anything, very well designed. However as you said its major downfall was only a couple of people in the whole world could speak it.

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