On My Lost Identity With Japanese

TL;DR This post is a look into a pretty prominent part of my life, and explores a period where I used learning Japanese, and largely Japanese media as an escape from the things that didn’t feel good to me at the time, leading to complete burnout during a breakup, resulting in feeling like I’d lost my identity. This post is largely skippable, but it’s something I wanted to get out of my system, and so that’s why I’m writing this.

An introduction to the Japanese Language

Japanese was a language that I’d always had in the back of my mind since high school, when a friend introduced me to Nujabes (ヌジャベス). He’d discovered the artist through Samurai Champloo, and although I didn’t particularly like the anime at the time (don’t kill me for that one), I fell in love with the music.

However, I didn’t really touch the language, or have any interest in learning it. That didn’t change until my early to mid twenties.

That’s when anime grabbed me again; this time through Parasyte -the maxim-. I wasn’t even looking to watch an anime at the time, I just stumbled across it on Hulu and thought it looked interesting, so I started watching it. I quickly became invested in the show, and almost immediately after finishing, I impulsively decided I was going to learn Japanese and bought a copy of GENKI I: An Integrated Course In Elementary Japanese.

After receiving my copy of GENKI I a few days later, I went in blind. Seeing that there were two alphabets was an eye opener at the time, but I started to learn hiragana first at a pace of 5 characters a day (holy slow batman). As you can tell by reading this, I wasn’t really invested in actually learning Japanese, and instead liked the idea of learning it. So, two weeks later I quit, and didn’t touch the Japanese language for multiple years.

The true start to my Japanese language journey

My life at the time of starting Japanese again was completely different that the life I had when I first attempted to learn Japanese. On the surface, my life seemed ideal; I had a house on three acres of land that we were renovating to make our own. I had two dogs, and we were thinking about getting chickens (we did end up getting them). I had a job that I genuinely enjoyed (still do), and at the time, I believed that my partner made me happy. However, I started to get this incessant feeling, very akin to loneliness.

At the time, I didn’t attribute this feeling I had to any unhappiness with my life. In fact, I thought it was due to two factors: a lack of exercise (this was certainly one factor), and being isolated (not having friends and leaving the house very little as I worked from home).

Instead of working through the feeling in a healthy manner, I decided that I needed a hobby; preferably one that was constructive, that would allow me to work at it little by little every day.

The first hobby I tried was baking. My ex has celiac, so in an effort to have sweet treats (I’ve always had a sweet tooth), I decided to try baking. I sort of clung to baking and went all in for a while; spending hours every weekend baking, and would sometimes spend my evenings doing it as well. Eventually the novelty ran out, and I did it less and less. This could be attributed to my ADHD, as I’m almost positive I wasn’t medicated yet when I tried baking, but that could be fake news (this is a jab at orange man). Regardless, I don’t think I was necessarily bored of baking (maybe a little burnt out), but I was primarily following recipes when I baked, so to me, the hobby didn’t feel inherently constructive. That’s at least what I told myself, and went back to the drawing board.

The next hobby was drawing and I almost immediately realized I hated it, and gave up on it almost a week after starting (still hurts thinking about the money I spent on supplies; ADHD sucks).

Some time around then, I played a game with my long time best friend (who I talked about above) and we discussed our lives. I don’t know what brought it up, but we discussed his studies (he was working on a PhD in linguistics at the time, which is now complete) and the thought of learning a language came to my mind. At this point, I was actually medicated, and thought it was actually possible. I decided to let it fester in my mind for a few days, and by chance, I was playing through Persona 5 Royal in my free time. After seeing a bunch of signs written in Japanese in the game, I realized that this was the hobby I wanted to do after all. And so I impulsively decided I was going to learn Japanese again.

However, as I didn’t want to fail again, I decided that I would learn hiragana and katakana for two weeks. If I was still passionate after this period, I’d fully commit and give it my all. To my surprise, I was even more passionate after that two week period; thus beginning my actual Japanese language learning journey.

Finding my identity with Japanese

The first few months were honestly impressive, with daily 2-3 hour study sessions (broken apart throughout the day). I had never committed to something this seriously, really ever in my life.

After learning hiragana and katakana enough to where I could past most quizzes, I started following the 30 day Japanese by shoui (TheMoeWay). During this period, I started to spend a lot more time watching anime and reading manga, namely the slice of life & romance genres. Shows like Super Cub, Laid-Back Camp, Tomo-chan Is a Girl!, and Horimiya showcased people finding happiness and living fulfilling lives; which made me feel good. As I watched more and more shows that were like this, I clung to them, and it was a major source of escape for me.

Like a lot of people who learn Japanese because of anime and manga, I would often dream of living in Japan during this period. In hindsight, I realize that it wasn’t truly the Japanese language, or even Japan that captivated me, but the aesthetic of what I thought Japan was: a world that seemed happier than my own.

This idealization of Japan gradually became a core part of my identity the longer I immersed myself in the language and culture. I clung to this overly romanticized view of Japan; a classic case of ‘the grass is greener on the other side’.

Losing my identity with Japanese

Eventually, as all new things do, the novelty ran out. It didn’t make me stop the hobby like I had with other hobbies in the past, but the feeling of loneliness I described above became prominent again. I remember not really attributing it to feeling lonely, but to feeling like I was missing something in my life.

To skip past the boring stuff, after some hard discussions with my partner at the time, we realized that we both wanted different things in life. At the same time, we also recognized that we didn’t have the capcity to meet each other’s needs, and so we made the difficult decision to part ways.

After the breakup, I clung to Japanese and even doubled down on my study time. Spending hours before and after work studying, along with 8+ hours on the weekends sometimes. Hardly maintainable, and I burnt out 1-2 months post breakup.

I decided I needed a break from a lot of things, and instead went on autopilot; retreating into hobbies that demanded less mental exertion than language learning, like rock climbing and playing video games. During this time, I tried multiple times to start up on Japanese again, but I just couldn’t, I was either too burnt out, or the sole reasoning for learning Japanese had diminished.

I became pretty depressed during this stage in my life. For one, breakups are never easy, and I had decided to stay in the state I was living in, instead of moving back with my parents. I wanted to heal, and I thought I would have the best opportunity to if I didn’t move back home. This was very hard, but I think overall, it was worth it. Secondly, this medium I had spent hundreds of hours on had begun to make me feel sad.

It’s hard to vocalize, but it had felt like this friend I had (Japanese) was leaving. I think dealing with grief is very normal during a breakup, and old hobbies become hard to do, whether that’s depression or from other things, however, I had made the Japanese language my identity for a long time, which lead me to ‘miss’ Japan deeply.

I had this period of feeling great nostalgia for Japan. It felt really weird; to feel nostalgic for a place you’ve never actually been to. After doing some researching, I found that I was experiencing a phenomenon known as anemoia.

Anemoia (noun): Nostalgia for a time you’ve never known.

What is the plan for the future

At the time of writing this, I’m past the point of complete burnout, and have spent time healing and understanding why I was feeling the way I did.

I have no desire to quit learning Japanese, and instead want to achieve my goal of obtaining N1. I’m at the point now where I do understand most of the signs in Persona 5 Royal, so that’s cool!

With that being said, I have no idea what the future will hold, but look forward to learning more about myself.