I think I must be a bit older than most Textfugu users, but that gives me a slightly different story to tell. I first got interested in Japanese because of the military-issue language manuals my dad brought back from his service at Iwakuni during the Korean War. When I was about six I thought they were the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.
At the age of nine, when my best friend was learning Elvish from the appendices to Lord Of The Rings, I thought learning Japanese would be a lot better, since I was pretty sure Japan actually existed.
When I was twelve, I started reading the translated novels my dad had on the bookshelf, including Yukio Mishima’s “The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea”. Definitely not one I would recommend as young-adult reading, but it sure as hell stuck with me, and everything I read made me even more curious about that strange country on the other side of the world. Back then, during the transition from dinosaurs to mammals, we didn’t know what anime was, but I was getting up at 5:30 every morning to watch Battle of the Planets; later came Voltron and Robotech.
At about 16, I became convinced I had no talent for languages (unlike my older brother, the German prodigy) but found I was really good at getting bad haircuts and thrashing around to loud music, so I lost a few years there, though I still watched every cartoon from Japan that made it to American tv.
So I’ve had a feeble stab at learning Japanese every five years or so ever since I was a tyke. It’s like a mysterious compulsion, and there’s usually a trigger. The last bout before this one was brought on by finding “Genji Days”, Edward Seidensticker’s diary of his years translating “The Tale of Genji” and living in Japan during the late 60′s-early 70′s. If you’re interested in the problems of translation in general, and Japanese in particular, I’d recommend it – it’ll also shatter any idea you might have about Seidensticker as a dry academic (dude got around).
This time, it’s manga. I’m a voracious reader, and a comics enthusiast, but I’d pretty much dismissed manga. “Sailor Moon” as a tv cartoon was a great reason to be late to work every day, but I didn’t think of reading it. I did subscribe to Mangajin during its brief existence, but I never got drawn in with the snippets it included.
Now I know better, and we’re getting better, more sophisticated manga in this country every year, but one trip to Kinokuniya in LA and I know I want to read it in the original. I also don’t want to depend on scanlators to provide me with access to the mountain of stuff deemed unsaleable in the US. And, yeah, someday I’d like to read Mishima, and Haruki Murakami, but manga seems a lot more accessible right now.
I’ve gotten further this time with Japanese than I’ve ever gotten before, finally fully learning the kana and getting at least some basic kanji down. I’ve also started believing I might actually learn to speak it too – and Textfugu’s been a big help, as well as Tofugu Enterprises’ ventures being generally mighty entertaining. ありがとうございます, Koichi & crew!

• This reply was modified 12 years, 7 months ago by  crowbark. Reason: damned tags!