Originally Posted by MissMisa (Post 513088)

Yeah. Personally, it doesn't bother me so much. As far as I'm concerned they can like what they like, and these people tend to be very young and are only just discovering Japan, such as 12-13 year olds [not wanting to stereotype them too much, however, I hate it when people make assumptions based on my age.] And I'm glad that they made it on here, because there are a lot of people with experiances of Japan so they are able to point them in the right direction.

I'm not a super fan of Japan, I just have a casual interest in some of the things over there, at the moment it is particularly the language which I want to learn for business purposes but I'm finding it difficult to get a course.

I love it where I am so it would be very unlikely I would attempt to move somewhere completely different such as Japan.

Oh and, a lot of these people live in America. They probably have the second most amount of anime and manga, second only to Japan. So I don't know what they complain about really, England and other places don't really have anything, if that's all they are interested in anyway.

Originally Posted by Hikikomori (Post 513108)

If you want to learn japanese and find it difficult to find a course you should do whet many others do, start watching anime with english subtitles, download some fancy "learn japanese" programmes and buy some "learn japanese" books. This is only if you are totally blank about the japanese language, don't know anything, not the basics. With the program and the books and the anime, you learn both how to write and how to pronounce.
If you already speak a lot Japanese now, I would feel like an idiot. But many people learn japanese this way, and so do I :p But then I'm only a 18 year old Norwegian girl so I don't know if you find it a good idea to watch anime just so you can learn Japanese :p

I have also noticed that all the har core otakus that ain't japanese, is american. So in Norway they call me an otaku, but if I go up to an otaku from Japan or America they would probably laugh in my face telling me i know nothing : ) So I guess I'm an Norwegian otaku then maybe.

Originally Posted by Alex110390 (Post 513114)

i really dont like that word, lol i find it very derogatory. i mean i absolutely love almost everything about japan but im also fully aware that i am white and not asian, so i really dont like it when people refer to me as that, i dont know about other people though.

Originally Posted by Kajitsu (Post 513118)

*envies you* I know only one phrase...

私は日本語を全然話しません。

I need to learn some conversation...

Originally Posted by MissMisa (Post 513113)

I borrowed some books from the library and I'm trying to learn Hirigana on a good website called Hiragana and Katakana Practice - Real Kana . It's been very helpful! I only know very basic things. Introductions, saying what I like and dislike, talking about my hometown, complimenting someone and congratulating people on special occasions. That's about it!

There was a thread on learning Japanese through anime, and people said that it can help you out but you can't learn all your Japanese from there because a lot of it is slang.

Don't worry, I'm only 17!

Originally Posted by Hikikomori (Post 513124)

Ah, I'm 17 too ;)
I believe you can learn a lot from anime, they have slang in Japan too, and learning to understand their slang would maybe become helpful, at least if you are planning to stay there over a longer period. I just use anime so i can learn to pronounce the words and learning how i can use the words i have learned and make them into sentences. I'm not focusing all that much on their writing system yet, I'm focusing on learning how to speak japanese and write japanese with "normal letters". I only know some of the basics yet though, greetings and goodbyes and a lot of different foods and drinks a lot of random words.

Originally Posted by MissMisa (Post 513129)

By normal letters you mean Romaji ^_^

Well from my point of view, the reason for me learning the language is for business purposes, it's a good international business language to learn. So really learning slang isn't all that important for me, but it is good for hearing how words are said though.

Originally Posted by MissMisa (Post 513092)

I don't even know if the peace sign originated from Japan, I'm quite sure it didn't. I thought it started in England with the V for Victory during the war.