I have had a love-hate relationship with Japanese, and Japan, ever since I started learning it.

When I first started learning Japanese, it was because I saw the “Morning Musume” English lesson, where a bunch of cute idol girls were “studying” English (actually, they pretty much weren’t, though maybe one or two learned something). I was fascinated by the characters scrolling across the screen, and decided right then to learn Japanese.

That was around eight years ago.

All that time, I’ve grown more familiar with Japanese culture, learning more about it, not necessarily immersing myself in it (because, well, living in Texas, I can’t), but becoming far more knowledgeable about the culture than most (well, nearly all, if we’re being honest) Americans. I became N5 proficient at the language, and I started watching anime. Basically, I started tracking many of the hobbies of otaku/weebs, without actually ever actually becoming one.

Or so I thought. Or so I’d hoped.

Through all this time, even though I grew to absolutely love (most) Japanese media, music, and I’ve grown to consider many (not all) aspects of their culture desirable and beautiful, I have yet to understand exactly why. And that’s been nagging at me.

I think I understand now.

Japanese Media

Japanese anime/media is an interesting animal. About 95 percent of it is trash. What seems to sell in Japan, particularly when it comes to music and anime, are cookie cutter, formulaic pablum that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Much like American pop, I suppose, though our lowest common denominator tends to be different. Japanese like panties, Americans like, well, anacondas or something.

Anyway, it’s the other five percent that’s amazing

I’ve found some amazing anime in my year or so watching it. Sound! Euphonium, ReLife, Oregairu, March Comes in like a Lion… these are all anime that have something useful to say, and have made me think. Hard. About who I am, about what Japan and the Japanese are to me, why I absolutely love it when they come out with something decent, in a way I simply do not feel about my own culture.

Recently, I’ve been watching an anime called “Love Live, Superstar”.

This isn’t a great anime. But it has a great song. “Butterfly wing”. It is maybe one of the best songs I’ve heard of the genre in a long time. And I’ve found a few other songs like this too. They’re perfect. Absolutely amazing. In the anime, the rival idol group is watching her perform it with their mouths open, and I understand the sentiment.

But then it hit me, in a flash. Why I’m lowkey obsessed with Japan.

It’s in my head.

What I mean is, my entire exposure to Japan and Japanese media has been through a screen. I have met, in my eight years, about four actual Japanese people, give or take, and I really don’t want to meet more, if I’m being honest. That’s because Japan is a place, for me, that is real in my head. I can take everything I know about Japan, overlay it with my own thoughts, ideas, and prejudices, and at the end, it’s become something of my creation. Something that’s not here.

And…. well… that pretty much means I became my own variety of weeb.

I’ll never go to Japan

I will likely never go to Japan. And I think the reason for that is, if I go to Japan, it will become real. It will become a place to me, something that is outside of me, something that I can no longer escape to but something to escape from. As long as I don’t do that, it remains a place I can escape to, to see and admire from afar, but never truly interact with.

And that, dear reader, is the problem.

I live in a relatively small town in Texas. About ninety thousand people, give or take. And, truth be told, I hate it here. I mean really hate it here. But it’s not because of the town itself, the town is fine, I have no particular antipathy to the town. I don’t hate Texas either, in fact, I don’t think I want to live anywhere else at the moment, awful weather aside. I don’t hate America at all, either. There’s nowhere I’d rather live, not even Japan. But I hate it because I can’t escape to it, I have to escape from it. The world outside is so awful, so hateful, so atrocious, that I really, to the deepest fiber of my being, don’t want anything to do with it.

This isn’t healthy. I understand that. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

But I have music, I have media, I have Japan, I have YouTube… I have all those things that I can spend most waking hours interacting with, and at the end of the day, they’ve pretty much become my life. Not because I have an unhealthy obsession with anything there, but because I have an unhealthy antipathy towards anything here.

Put succinctly, I’m running away. To an idealized version of Japan that doesn’t exist. A Japan that I would probably hate just as much, and for the exact same reason, if I lived there.

And the worst thing is… I don’t know how to get past it.

But… I spend a lot of time, effort, and money, learning Japanese. And if this is the only reason, I’ve wasted all of it.

I’ve stated many times that I don’t consider myself a weeb or otaku. I still kind of don’t. This post is why – at least I’m self-aware about it. Having the interest I do in Japan and Japanese isn’t wrong, but the reasons I have that interest aren’t tending towards my mental health. And that’s made crystal clear by the fact that I don’t ever really want to go there.

What is in my head is always so much better, more wonderful, and more perfect than anything outside it can ever be (and I include music in that). And as long as Japan stays in my head…

And that is no way to treat a people and culture.

I haven’t decided whether I’m going to quit yet. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into the endeavor, and there may yet be a good reason to continue. But this ain’t it.