Being half-Japanese was frustrating. My dad was white, my mom Japanese; I grew up in America as a white girl with Asian tendencies. Because we lived in America, my parents thought that I could survive in the world without any ability to communicate with half of my family.
As I grew older, this became more and more bothersome. When we visited my family in Japan, I yearned to talk to them. I loved my Japanese side… I loved Japan: the food, the culture, the language. The older I got, the more the hole grew. I felt like I was missing half of my life, half of my being.
Eventually, I decided to take this into my own hands. My mom was refusing to speak to me in Japanese… and without someone to talk to or listen to, I couldn’t learn Japanese, not really. It was from this that my obsession with Japanese rhythm games arose.
You see, I was just a frustrated high school student wanting to talk to half of her family. Japanese is rated from multiple sources as the hardest language to learn for native English speakers, so, because my mom didn’t teach me Japanese when I was growing up, I needed some other form to help me. I found this in Japanese rhythm games.
Love Live School Idol Festival, Band Yarouze!, Utano Prince-sama Shining Live, Boyfriend Kakkokari, Tsukino Paradise… I played them all. How exactly would a rhythm game help you learn a language? Well, the solution lies in the inherent characteristics of Japanese entertainment. Games with just gaming are unsatisfactory. Japanese prefer to interact with their characters! So, a lot of Japanese games come with a “light novel” sort of experience. The characters are often voiced, and you get to read about them and their lives as you play the game.
I would play the game – I got super good at rhythm games from how often I played – and read and listen to the stories. Within a year, I picked up hiragana and katakana (the basic Japanese writing systems) along with some basic kanji (the Chinese characters Japan borrowed for their language). I could recognize basic sentence structure, different parts of speech, and the levels of formality used in different situations. However, my vocabulary was extremely limited. I couldn’t talk or understand anyone, even if I could sort of understand how things were done.
My obsession with rhythm games led me to other associated media. I got into Japanese idols, J-pop, otome, and drama CDs… I basically tried to expose myself to all sorts of Japanese media and culture. My vocabulary expanded, eventually to the point where I could understand basic conversation. Very basic conversation.
Now, I am still trying to learn Japanese. I am still struggling, forcing vocabulary into my brain. Language learning is hard! But, I learned that an obsession can certainly give motivation to continue. After all, I’m still playing rhythm games. If you don’t hear from me, it’s probably because Tsukino Paradise has an event going on with Mamoru-san as the main prize. I’m not getting any sleep tonight!
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