I was wondering what the different reasons are for people liking Japanese. For me, I like living in Japan and the more Japanese I learn the broader scope my life can become. I can meet more people and engage much more naturaly. So, for me it's simply a tool to make my life better whilst here. If I didn't live in Japan, I would have zero interest in it.
Maybe many people in Japan have similar reasons to me but how about those who don't live in Japan?Are you studying to live in Japan or is there just something about the langauge that interests you just in the language itself.

P.S. Please don't say "Japanese is cool" etc. I would hope that we are all slighty brighter than that kind of comment.

For me, Japanese is the key to an otherwise quite inaccessible culture. Studying languages is fun because it's a form of exploring the world, and it caters to a need of belonging.

Then why do I like Japanese in particular? Aside from the fact that I like how colorful spoken Japanese sounds, I especially like the kanji. I've only been studying them for a week, but I discovered that learning them is really addicting! They are all beautiful in their own right and I can't wait to get to know them all

My list of things I don't like about this (really cool!) language is probably quite a bit longer (grammar). But I guess that's the perspective of a student only a month long in

My primary reason is having lived in Japan and wanting to go back again at some point. Being able to participate more fully in daily life, to have meaningful conversations with non-English speaking colleagues, having a better chance of making friends, understanding culture etc was all really important to me. Aside from the practical aspect though, Japanese is the first non-European language I've attempted to learn, and I've found it interesting in its own right from that point of view. I'm fascinated by the concept of language; how and when it developed in humans, the process by which children acquire it and reinvent it every generation, how dialects develop and different languages/dialects influence each other and so on. English is my native tongue and I've studied three other European languages in the past and been exposed to aspects of others, including earlier forms (particularly of English). Studying Japanese has been particularly interesting and enjoyable for me simply because of its lack of relation to any other language that I'm familiar with. It's given me a chance to test some of the ideas I have about language and to look at how else it's possible to construct a language. It really interests me the way that Japanese and English have different things that are essential and that are implicit in even the most basic sentences.

I've also come to love kanji in their own right, particularly thanks to RTK. From being the most frustrating part of learning Japanese when I first started, it's become the most relaxing and satisfying aspect of my study. It's also nice to know that if I ever decide to learn Chinese, I'm unlikely to find the concept of learning to read it as daunting as I might have done previously!

I've always had a fondness for linguistics as a hobby (I haven't studied it formally). Originally Japanese appealed to me as something exotic, something different from European languages that would help expand my ways of thinking about the world.

Now that I work for a Japanese company, there are times when a little Japanese comes in useful.