/jp/ - Otaku Culture

It has been exactly 7 years ago since I first started learning Japanese on 4/13/2014. Although I haven't posted on DJT regularly for like 5 years I've made it a habit of posting yearly updates. That said I've already said basically everything I've wanted to say so it's pretty obligatory at this point.

Lately I've mainly been reading light novels. It takes me about 4 hours to read a LN at this point although it varies by the book of course. I read about 15 LNs in the past month, and I'm nearing 100 books read after a pretty long time of only having around ten. I feel like one's sense of scale kind of shifts over time; I often see people really into their studies talking about like "Hmm do I need to read 5 VNs before I'm good? 10 LNs?", just having a pretty low sense of scale, but as time goes on those balloon into being like, damn, I need to read 300 VNs to have read anything at all, or like, damn, I need to read 1,000 books before I can be impressed. As for me, I'm not actually aiming for 1,000 books, but given how fast I read now I definitely don't think I'll feel any pride with how much I've read until it's in the 500+ range, which isn't something I expected in the past.

Incidentally, I don't say this from a "Learning Japanese" perspective so much as a "being immersed in the culture" perspective. I mentioned it before but after you can read/play things without a texthooker the whole perspective of "learning Japanese" really fades unless you stick to learning communities like DJT and really associate your identity with it. Knowing and using Japanese just becomes a part of your life; a tool you think no more of than your native language. So, when I say something like "I won't feel pride until I have 500+ books", it's not that I need to 500+ books to "learn Japanese", but more 500+ books to be comfortable as an otaku. The more time I spend in JP cultural spheres the more my ignorance burns. Just being comfortable in these communities and spheres requires, I think, requires quite an enormous time investment, perhaps decades. Again, not to understand the language itself, but to fully grasp the culture at large. It's like a "lurk moar" kind of thing, except instead of lurking a 4chan board you're spending a decade consuming immense amounts of Japanese culture (books/tv shows/etc) to try to catch up to all the cultural content you missed by not being born in Japan and naturally exposed to all this content.

All that isn't very relevant to those who don't speak to JP people though. I probably wouldn't if my job and other things didn't put me in a situation where I really wanted to talk to Japanese people (who don't know English of course). It's also overthinking it a bit, since you can quite easily just blunder your way through these spheres and JP people will be too polite to point out your idiocy half the time. Anyway, yeah, that's that. Nice to see you in 2021 DJT.

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