Japanese and I have had the longest relationship out of all the languages I’ve taken an interest in, but it’s all the language with which I’ve had the most rocky relationship. It was the first foreign language I was ever exposed to when I overheard my sister watching the anime Naruto at age 11. It immediately piqued my interest – I thought it was awesome how the anime characters weren’t speaking English, but I could still understand them because of the subtitles. It was an eye-opening moment, but… I didn’t go anywhere with that feeling for a long time after that. I watched a few other anime here and there, and littered my fanfictions with random Japanese phrases (>.<), but all of that was very sporadic and unorganized self-study impulses until I got to take my first Japanese class as a freshman in college.
Though I’ve taken the most classes with Japanese (from Beginner I – Advanced III) and have done a short summer study abroad stint in Japan, I still don’t feel as confident in my abilities to translate and understand Japanese to the degree I do with Chinese. I have a few theories as to why this is, but I won’t bore whoever reads this with those types of speculations.
Song-wise, I was really into the Japanese rock bank One OK Rock for about two years, which is from where the majority of my translations stem. As to the degree of their accuracy… let’s just say I can, and more than likely should, always make more revisions on them, for sure ^^;;
粉絲字幕~Fensi Subs~ 