What made YOU so interested in Japan?
 

Basically what the title of the thread says.

I know that most people around my age (I'm 20) or younger got interested in Japan because of anime, video games and\or manga. I'm curious what got the older folks interested in Japan and what made them go there.

As for me I'm not into anime and stuff like that...but I am a huge football(soccer) fan and since 2002 the Japanese national team has been one of favorite national teams(BTW they were really good in 2010 never would I have thought they'd beat Cameroon). And that was what initially sparked my interest in Japan. Now that I'm older I think that teaching (I'm studying to be a teacher atm) in Japan would be a great way to rack up some teaching and life experience. It would be something that would be out of my comfort zone and it would be something completely different for me and that is what attracts me to Japan. What about you?

Edit: Oh and Japanese rap is not bad at all!! Has a nice flow to it :p That's something else out of football that I think is kewl in Japan...Pardon my ignorance I know VERY little about their culture...

The People with their wonderful mentality and kindness!!

Just a beautiful World!

i got interested in japan by anime.Then you learn about other japanese stuff and it's just the coolist place.

Well I like anime,but basically,I grew up as a Power Rangers fan then one day I found out about Super Sentai and how Power Rangers uses footage from it but changes the story. I don't know if you know,Go-Onger was "Yayyy! We're mental we are!" whereas Power Rangers RPM was in a post-apocalyptic future. But then I was interested in something else for a couple of years,but then SPD got me back into Power Rangers and then I started to follow Boukenger,and then I got into Kamen Rider in 2007.

First of all I wanted to make a tokusatsu in the UK and then I realised,that's just not realistic. I'm unlikely to get a job in it in Japan,but I'd say it's impossible to get round British people. Power Rangers isn't even ours. I am still going to make a no-budget tokusatsu film where I live however.

I suppose my initial interest traces itself back to the Nintendo Entertainment System. For those of you who are too young to even know or care what that is, it was Nintendo's first home video game console to come to the US and it pretty much saved the video game industry in the US at the time.

Im not that into anime but i do like it.
I can say what made me interested in Japan are the buildings, its just plain amaizing, the old fashion houses and their actual buildings.
Their language is so facinating.
Their Science
Their Electronics
Almost everything is fasinating about Japan or at least thats my point of view.

Living in Japan made me pretty interested in it...

I mean I liked Mario before I came here but I didn't think differently of the place until I arrived.

Now that I'm here, it's a great place to be!

The incredible amounts of powder snow that fall each year in Hokkaido are what initially got me interested. Over 7 years of living there got me interested in a few other things about the place.

Teenage mutant hero turtles

Anime, manga, sci-fi novels, samurai stories and books, movies, landscape, beautiful and clean

Umm teenage mutant NINJA turtles were created by an american comic book company. If you realize this that is okay. Just wanted to make sure though.

I was always into Asia, but at age eight I had neighbors....a family, the mother was japanese, father was american but spoke it, and they had a daughter who was younger than me. I became really close to them but I got upset at not understanding when they would have conversations in Japanese...so I started to learn, bit by bit. The stories about culture, food, history, etc., got me so into it. I liked anime at one point too, but it was never my Japanese focus.
Its been 12 years since then, I am now 20...wheee

Of course it was. It bastardised bits of Japanese culture for western kids though. I lapped it up. It set me on the path of being interested in Japan, soon finding Samurai Pizza Cats and Monkey and then eventually Kurosawa films and other stuff.

Ahh miss those guys

For me its the other way round. I fell in love with the culture & landscape & people of Japan, and as a result, got into Japanese music, anime & other entertainments. Heck, I'd go as far to say even the Adult Video scene really appeals to me. Just fits my personality

You like Adult Videos eh? ;) There's so many like subgenres in Japan it's hard to know whether someone's gonna just pose for hours or they're gonna take everything off! I tend to just look at pictures. I occasionally watch one of those videos where they just pose but they can get boring after a while!

I'm actually thinking of being a model over there. This sounds vain,I know,but I'm quite good looking. I've been told it for years and thought it was just,you know,what your mum says,but I'm blonde haired blue eyes,I should be popular over there.

Oh,and just to clear things up,it was Ninja Turtles in the US and Hero Turtles in the UK originally. It's Ninja Turtles again now.

When I was a child my grandmother took in lodgers from a nearby language school, and many of them were Japanese. I remember helping one of them unpack and wanting to be able to read their books and the words on the cardboard boxes ... it kind of went from there :)

The Japanese language is a seperate issue. I remember thinking it really sucked that we didn't learn Japanese at school,and if you live in Britain why aren't you learning Welsh? There is no useless language. Every language opens some doors,you know? If I don't know French,I just won't go to France. It's not the end of the world. So I didn't take French for my GCSEs and I started learning Japanese on my own. Sometimes I think I should have done both if I want to be a bit of a polyglot but I didn't see it that way.

I can only advise you give it a try. You'll never know otherwise. Videos/pics I've seen have delved more into the 'fetish' category. & I know what you mean about standing posing for ages. I've skipped forward video, & they still stand as before. Lol. I just think "Hmmm. Guess this is it". Lol

I've got a hypnosis fetish,but that's kind of one that no-one can help me with! Not much porn revolving around being hypnotised!

What kind of fetish do you have? I like nurse outfits and I like leather,oh and I like them as teachers but I like all sorts really. Except things like schoolgirls and tentacles,that's going too far even if they are adults really.

Sorry,I'm lowering the tone a bit here!

Hypnosis? Never heard of that one before. I like the tentacle stuff, & 'Japscat'. Yeah, hardcore stuff. Lol. I'm not one to judge, so feel, as long as its legal, anybody can be go for anything they like. I seen on this Japanese film (called 'Love Exposure') one guy it was swallowing woman's vomit. Its a film, I know, but I can guarentee theres people out there like that. I like J-Rockers too :)

There's been quite a few interesting responses looooooooooool.

Well at least if men swallow vomit as well then it's equal! It's normally things like that happen to the woman! Was he like "OH NAW NOT THE BEES"?!

Occasionally browsing YT I find a clip from an AV of a woman being hypnotised but it's not really a genre,it just pops up here and there in films and it's always the man hypnotising the woman,whereas I'd rather have a woman hypnotise me. There's videos that hypnotise you on YouTube but if they're by a woman,they're very fail a lot of the time and never by a Japanese person. I've tried making some myself but it's easier if you're doing a text-only one with no voice and I don't know if I'd be very good if I tried to hypnotise someone in real life. Never tried it.

I remember seeing a bit of a Japanese programme, where the guy hypnotised women, & gave them orgasms by touching them. You refreshed my memory there :D

Yeah,there's odd clips floating around. I saw a similar one,only there was a lot of women and there were these men doing Japanese drumming! Bit weird. Comes with the territory I suppose.

My grandparents and one of my teachers.

*plooka plooka*

What does plooka plooka mean?

A culture with rich meaning and desires that even thousands of years later still excist which is something I can say sadly doesn't exsist in the states

Probably my favorite response in this threat lool

But you can't really blame the US\Canada because they don't have "a culture with rich meaning and desires that even thousands of years later still exist" because our culture (I'm assuming your North American) is like one giant melting pot that take a bit of everything and promotes it's people to be a lot more open and tolerant(which unfortunately doesn't always happen).

Or simply that American colonial culture (and the birthdate of the US itself) is only a couple of hundred years old compared to the Japanese.

Canada actually does seem to have an interesting culture.

... thanks

What makes you say that?

I think we are "Mixed" culture if anything, I live in an Asian dominated neighborhood.. just one major intersection over, its an Italian neighborhood, with the Jewish just slightly south, and the Jamaican further south...

The only native we have are the friggin beaver, every family was an immigrant at some point.....

One thing would be that living here is not easy, and that is fun as one learns a lot. I am more into Far East in general than Japan in particular (especially with my family roots going back to Northern China), but at the beginning it was martial arts, and for a past decade it is calligraphy.

"The only native we have are the friggin beaver" - Lol, Godwine :D

Definitely, forget about living there for a long time. We need more users like you to really tell those kid out there that they need to be more realistic. Its not easy starting life in Japan.. not even as a tourist....

That was an exaggeration :) But its true, I don't think We have any native culture here in Canada. Everyone came from somewhere. If you take out a map and draw a circle around my place with a 6KM radius, you will have enough cultural communities scattered to start a second UN....

Well I like cold countries. I'd like to stay in a log cabin. I might not go skiing! I think I'd be scared!

ペチ、ペチ、ペチ…
 

Thus, I don't have a culture. I hate being this way. :(

[...]

What got me interested in Japan was the sound of the language they spake/spoken/spaken/spoke. ( Which ever word makes the most sense ) When, I first heard it, I loved it. It was like a song you'd listen to; it had a beat. So, want to learn that beat and make it become my own. To be able to converse with the people. But, that beat has many paths to start with. I don't know which path to take to reach the end, the center, the top... So, I'll walk around aimlessly until I reach my destination. But for now, I'll just lick my chin and nose really fast to past the time.:mtongue:

*I started with videogames (I used to be a Nintendo fanboy).
*Then I learned about anime ( Currently I still like it, but I mostly watch Seinen series).
*I love the language ( what other language uses 3 writing systems?).
*I feel it's my duty to study all the Japanese history, geography and culture throughly...
*I started liking calligraphy, thus I need to study it....

P.S. If the japanese laws were better, then I would consider their AVs as good, unfortunately that is not the case.

Being brought up in a Korean influenced household, despite being a white American. That led me to explore other cultures of Asia.

It's pretty freaky how non of you mention the people and their wonderful mantality as a reason Why!!

Kinda sad really.. cause thats the actual point which stands out the most between the two worlds.

All this other stuff is meaningless, think about it!!

Why don't you expand a little bit about their wonderful mEntality bobby. I always get a kick out of hearing your extensive and intricate assump...err I mean knowledge about Japan.