Sorry, will try to make this rant as short as can be. But TL;DR is this; Considering learning Japanese, and taking it as a major in University. That's the short story.
The less short story is as follows; Was never good in school, only good at the things that interested me. Was better at english than most because of my love for video games and movies, which would never be translated into danish. I was a bit of dyslexic so the Danish was not too good, but I caught up eventually. The sciences and math is were I burn, I wasted my life away in four years of german. It had no interest to me at the time.
I left school, have worked for 5-6 years, and now as a 25 year old man I decided last summer to go back and do college again. I now need 1,5 years more of dedicated community college.
I know my strengths, I am good at things that interest me. I am interested in history, philosophy, anthropology, psychology. The humanities. But the thing with all of these as a major field of study, is that while they interest me greatly, they interest me greatly in small doses, and as a pass time. Not my sole searching purpose.
I've been told by someone that if I took Japanese, I could take a minor field, and branch my Japanese into one of these.
I looked up the needed marks to get into Japanse as a major, and it's not to high. I suspect everyone is gratifying towards Chinese. That makes sense. But I am not about making sense. I am too much of a spoiled middle class idiot. I will never be able to vote or do the right thing based on that.
But like many of you, the fascination with Japanese, throughout Anime, Manga, music and games, and to me, now also, Martial Arts, I feel this is the right choice.
The thing is that it scares me. I've heard tales of people who had it for 6 years 1-2 times a week and then went to Japan and was not able to do anything. I've also heard someone say that learning to talk Japanese is easy. Writing is the hard part.
Finally, everyone talks about the Japanese industry and supremacy in Asia is over, and that it is now the time of Korea and Chinas reign, but I hope that in 5-8 years time after doing my bachelor or master, that I would be able to get a good career.
My mom says im stupid if I take Japanese. She says that I have no idea how hard it is, and that I should take something easier, and that I will most likely drop out as I have with lots of education related courses throughout my life. I can't disagree with this.
But if I also tell you that this phase of being *addicted* to Japanese culture, from having J-Pop on my Itunes playlist to walking around with T-Shirts with Buddhist scriptures, and that I have been doing this nonsense for 9-10 years now? I just don't think it's going to go away. Do I want to live in Japan forever? No, I don't think so. But I do feel it's one of the things I need to do. From 13 Assassins to Lost in Translation, from Ebisu Muscats to Envy and Susumu Hirasawa, from Samurai Champloo to Elfen Lied. What the hell am I supposed to do if I don't do this, even if it sounds near impossible to learn all this!!
