Why Learn Japanese? 10 Reasons From a Guy Who Did It

Ten years ago, I was sitting in a cafe in Akita, Japan preparing for the trimester final exam of my Japanese 101 class.

Today, I'm sitting in a cafe in Taiwan, having passed the JLPT N1, and am waiting for work to end so I can go back to reading あん (Sweet Bean Paste).

So, take it from me—yes, learning Japanese is worth it. Whether you want to study Japanese for a career change, you're interested in Japanese culture, or you just feel like trying something new, the Japanese Language has something for you.

To get started, here are 10 reasons to learn Japanese:

1. Learning Japanese will make you a better communicator

Try something for me real fast:

That was surprisingly hard, wasn't it?

Remember that feeling, because this is what basically all of your first conversations in Japanese will feel like.

You see, even a 5-year-old native speaker of English knows about 10,000 words. A typical 20 year old knows ~42,000 lemmas. That's a lot of words! For as long as we can remember as native speakers, we've been able to open our mouths and literally say whatever pops into our head.

When you first try to speak Japanese, you won't be able to do that. You'll have a very limited vocabulary and understanding of Japanese sentence structures, so you often won't be immediately sure how to say whatever it is that you want to say.

By the time you reach an intermediate level of Japanese, this practice of taking a moment to reflect on what you really want to say and considering the various ways you could try to express that idea will have become second nature.

You can do this in your native language, too, and it's kind of a super power. A lot of the times, it's how you say something that makes all the difference.

2. Learning Japanese can open up new career paths

It's no secret that Japan is an industrious place: it has one of the highest GDPs in the world and also submits the 3rd most patent applications annually, behind the US and China.

Then, whereas most international business is done in English, Japanese companies (understandably) prefer to communicate in Japanese. As such, speaking Japanese can give you a leg up—especially if you're in Japan-dominated industries like automotive vehicles, electronics, or robotics.

What these kind of surveys miss, in their aggregate statistical nature, is that learning a language isn't just a flat % increase in salary. It's more of an all-or-nothing thing. You simply won't be eligible for some positions unless you speak Japanese, and the act of learning Japanese may put you in certain situations where you'll find opportunities that you would have missed if you hadn't gone down this rabbit hole in the first place.

So if you're living in Japan or are simply interested in working with a Japanese business, learn some Japanese! You just might be surprised where that path leads you. I have been, at least.

(P.S. — some major Japanese companies that are household names: Toyota, Sony, Panasonic, Nintendo, and Canon)

3. Japanese music is awesome

Yeah, yeah, I know. When you think of Japanese, you probably think of anime and manga.

We'll get to that.

First, music.

Most Western pop music follows what's called a I–vi–IV-V chord progression. You don't need to know what that means. Just check out the below video and notice that you can literally play hundreds of songs by looping these same four chords over and over again—everything from Frozen to Don't Stop Believing to No Woman No Cry.

Well, as it would happen, Japanese has its own "default" chord progression, too: It's IV^M7–V⁷–iii⁷–vi. Looks more complicated, doesn't it! Now we have fancy superscript characters tossed into the mix.

Anyway, check it out. It's pretty snazzy.

So if you've got a favorite anime or video game song that you swear just hits different—that's because it does. This chord progression was first used in 1975, it rocked Japan, and permanently altered the "gravity" of Japan's musical world. When you listen to Japanese music, it's almost like you're entering an alternate universe where music evolved in a different direction.

And if you by some chance have managed to live your entire life without every being exposed to a single Japanese song, here's some stuff for you to check out:

And as a shameless plug, here's my personal favorite Japanese song: Yamazaki Masayoshi, One more time, one more chance. It's a ballad written by a Japanese singer-songwriter who lost his wife to the 1995 Kobe earthquake.

4. Learning Japanese will help you to understand Japanese culture (and thus make more sense of Japanese media)

Japan is what's known as a high-context culture, meaning that Japanese people tend to prefer more indirect means of communication. As people don't usually put their thoughts or desires explicitly into words, it's necessary to "read the air" to effectively navigate Japanese conversations.

As odd as it might seem to my American ears, as I was raised to say what I mean and mean what I say, Japanese communication makes a virtue out of basically the opposite. Very clearly stating your thoughts is seen as being kinda rude because it is seen to imply that you think the person you are talking to is so daft they won't be able to put two and two together themselves.

You might be thinking "that probably leads to a lot of misunderstandings," and you'd be right.

There's actually an entire genre of humor called 勘違いコント (kanchigai konto, "misunderstanding sketch") in which one person thinks they're talking about one thing, a second person thinks they're talking about another, and this misunderstanding leads to chaos.

For example, here's a skit in which a detective receives a tip as to the names of three people running a drug ring. He writes their names vertically on a white board. A second detective walks into the room and reads their names horizontally—from which perspective, the text reads, "Actually, I wear a wig..."

All this is to say that as you learn Japanese and get a better feel for the Japanese approach to communication, you just might find that there's a bit more to your favorite Japanese shows than initially met the eye.

5. Anime and Manga. Need I say more?

I'll keep this section short because it's an obvious one. Japanese anime and manga has won the hearts of people all over the world. Can you even find somebody who doesn't know what Pokémon is?

Whereas other apps are basically gamified textbooks, Migaku teaches you Japanese by letting you do things like this:

Yeah. You just click directly on the subtitles and see a definition of what that particular word means. It's cool—and it turns out that we learn faster when we're having fun.

If that sounds a little too good to be true, check out:

6. Learning Japanese will make your trip to Japan better

So, I've just typed in "trip to Japan" into Google, and this is what I see:

Man! Isn't that pretty. The pink of the sakura trees, the orange of the Shinto shrines, Mount Fuji in the background. Gorgeous.

It's also kinda fake.

You see, whenever you look at pictures of Japan on Google or Instagram, you're not seeing the real Japan. You're looking at a very carefully curated slice of Japan that some marketer somewhere has decided would probably make them money if tourists see it. In other words, somebody is trying to sell you something. You'll certainly find these places if you take a trip to Japan, but they'll be full of other tourists taking pictures, bored Japanese people selling overpriced things, and stuff like that.

On the other hand, if you know a bit of Japanese, you can take a bus or rental car to get off the beaten path and see the "real" side of Japan—the one that Japanese people actually live in.

7. Learning Japanese will give you a major head start learning Chinese

When you start learning a new language, it's natural to start learning from the writing system. The writing system presents an ideal starting point in that it's a relatively straightforward task, there's (usually) only a few dozen things to learn, and—importantly—you can't really do anything in a language if you don't know the alphabet.

The basics are called ABCs for a reason, you know.

Learners of Japanese, however, are in for something of a surprise: the language has three writing systems.

Yeah, you read that right. Thousands.

If you want to confidently read a newspaper in Japanese, you'll need to know over 2,000 kanji.

We're not going to spend time talking about how kanji work or how to learn them here—that's covered extensively in the kanji article, linked above. Instead, I just want to give you a bit of good news:

The word "kanji" (漢字(かんじ) ) literally means "Chinese" (漢) "character" (字).

While there are some stylistic differences, Chinese languages use the same Chinese characters that Japanese does. This means that if you learn Japanese and then later decide to start learning Mandarin, Cantonese, or one of the other Chinese languages, you'll enjoy a massive head start. Pretty much all of the Japanese characters also exist in Chinese, and many Japanese words can be ported directly into Chinese, too.

(As a small side note, while we're talking about other languages—Japanese grammar and Korean grammar almost perfectly overlap. So if you're more into Korean culture, learning Japanese will allow you to make some headway into Korean, too.)

8. Learning Japanese opens up a new world of literature

My other hobby is writing fiction, so let me let you in on a secret:

Publishers don't like losing money.

A big part of querying as a new author comes down to convincing a publishing house that your story is similar to a few other books that performed well but also somehow different in a better, special way. In other words, you have to convince them that they can probably sell your book because something similar is already selling well.

This is what you call bias.

The wild success of books like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter means that, when an English speaker thinks of fantasy, they think of things like knights and dragons or wizards and wands. Publishers know that readers like this kind of stuff, so they look to publish books that can scratch the same itch from a slightly different angle. The massiveness of these literary giants exerts a sort of gravity, affecting the trajectory of everything else published in the same genre.

Now, here's the fun question:

Enter the world of Japanese literature.

Japan is the #2 market for books globally, and they have their own giants—the "classic" stories that drag everything else within the genre in a certain direction.

Here's a list of the top light novels (by sales) in Japanese history. You'll notice trends:

For example, check out Guin Saga, the OG of Japanese fantasy, featuring a powerful warrior who has woken up in another world wearing a tiger mask that he cannot remove.

Even if you're not into books, know that this same "freshness" permeates every aspect of Japanese media, from J-dramas to anime to variety TV shows to manga. There'll be something new for you, and it'll be cool.

9. Japanese has the coolest apps and resources of any language

I've lived in six countries, dabbled in eight languages, and learned four to a high enough level that I could forget English and continue my life mostly as normal.

So, as someone who has been there and done that, let me tell you—so far as apps and resources go, Japanese is on another level. For whatever reason, the language (or culture) just seems to attract the type of people who like making awesome tools. There are more resources for learning Japanese available than resources for all of the other languages I've learned combined. It's ridiculous, to be honest.

Like, if you decide you want to study Russian, you'll find yourself with no other option as a beginner but to drill grammar exercises that haven't been updated since the 1960's.

If you decide to learn Japanese, Migaku is an all-in-one platform that can take from you from zero to fluent.

When first starting out, you'll work through our two beginner's courses:

Our courses can be done via our iOS or Android app on mobile, or via our website on the computer.

By the time you finish the courses, you'll be able to take advantage of Migaku's main functionality, shown below:

If you see a word you'd like to learn, just click on that orange button in the top-right corner of the dictionary. We'll automatically make you a flashcard that looks like this:

To learn Japanese with Migaku, all you have to do is read or watch your favorite content and click on words you don't know.

10. Learning Japanese will help you understand English

The cool thing about our native languages (I'm assuming yours is English) is is that we just kind of grow into them. We go from crying to babbling to spurting out words here and there and then, before you know it, we're five or six years old expressing unique and interesting thoughts about the world.

And that kinda just... happens.

Native speakers don't really know how their native language works—they just know what sounds natural. They feel it.

Part of the reason that learning a second language is so hard is that, if you're older than ten or so, it just doesn't work that way anymore. Learning a language takes conscious effort, and you'll inevitably spend time mucking about in the weeds of linguistics and grammar.

To speak Japanese, for example, you're going to learn about concepts like:

The thing is, all this stuff actually exists in English, too. You just hadn't been aware of it. (English is hard, man.)

I won't ramble because I'm a nerd and I know it, but I promise you—if you learn Japanese, and you reach an intermediate level or so, you'll start noticing stuff about English that you'd never noticed before.

And that's kind of cool.

So, should you learn Japanese?

Duh, of course.

This article is like 3,000 words long. I wouldn't have written that much if I was just going to say nah, learn Spanish instead.

Japanese is hard—I won't lie—but, really, do it. You won't regret it. If you put in the time to learn the language well enough to do things you enjoy in Japanese, it will pay your effort back in dividends. You can literally enjoy the language for your entire life, and it just might change your life.

But you don't have to take my word for it.

Click that big purple button at the bottom of this page to join Migaku's Discord server and ask thousands of other learners why they think learning Japanese is worthwhile.