Japanese Writing Lab #2: Why did you start studying Japanese?

This is the 2nd assignment for a program I have started in order to help myself and others improve their writing in Japanese. For details about the program, see this post. Also see this post for a list of all assignments.

The topic of this writing assignment is to discuss why you started learning Japanese. The ideal length is a few  paragraphs, but for beginning students a few simple sentences is fine.

If you are having any difficulty thinking of what or how to write it, feel free to check out my submission below for ideas. Don’t worry if your writing is significantly shorter or simpler than mine, this isn’t a contest–it’s more about each of us improving our respective writing abilities. If you don’t know very much Kanji but still want to participate, it’s OK to use just Hiragana with some Katakana here and there if you know it.

Also, don’t be afraid to do Internet searches to check for how natural certain phrases or word combinations are. I do that pretty frequently when writing, and though it is very time consuming, it makes the end result a bit more natural (I hope!).

Once you finish this writing assignment please post it via one of the two following methods:

1. For those who have a blog (WordPress or anywhere else is fine): post it on your blog, and post a comment on this article including a link to your post. I also suggest adding a link on your post back to this article, so people who find your post can follow it to read other people’s submissions.
2. For those who don’t have a blog: simply post it as a comment to this article with the text you’ve written. [Note: creating a blog is pretty easy and free on many sites, so if you have a few minutes I’d just consider just trying to create a blog. Several people have already done this in order to participate in this program]

My submission

This is a topic very close to my heart and I really enjoyed writing this. I probably could have written a few pages worth, but I tried to keep it relatively short.  While writing this, I realized that I really do need to brush up on my writing skills more!

僕が日本語を勉強しようと思ったのはいろんな理由があるんですけど、やっぱり日本のアニメが好きというのが大きかったんです。

高校時代、日本が大好きな友達の紹介で「アキラ」や「攻殻機動隊」などのアニメ映画を見てすごく感動して日本のアニメをもっと観たくなりました。日本のアニメにはアメリカの映画やカートゥーンに無い何かを感じ取れて、何よりもその独特の世界観に魅了されました。まるで今まで見ていた白黒映画に急に色がついたような感じでした。ちょうどその頃、日本の作家の村上春樹さんの小説も好きで、彼の本を英訳版ではなくて日本語でそのまま読めるようになりたいと思いました。

アニメを紹介してくれた友達は独学で日本語を勉強していたから僕も日本語を勉強してみようかと思って、本屋さんで適当に教科書を買って勉強し始めました。

しかし、アニメや村上春樹の小説が好きだから勉強を始めたと言っても、他にも理由がありました。漠然としたイメージではあったが、「サムライ」とか「ニンジャ」とかそういう和文化も、ある程度までアメリカで流行ってて、それらの事ももっと知りたいなという気持ちも多少ありました。

それに、若い頃から「外国語で話せたらいいな」とか「外国語で考えられたらすごいな」という素直な希望もあって、２０年間勉強してもその満足感が持続してるのも嬉しいです。