Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

Why does everybody want to learn Japanese? What makes Japanese so enticing? Why not Mandarin or at lead Spanish?

I'd say it's confirmation bias. In my personal circle, not a lot of people are interested in the Japanese language, but I know a few who took at least a few lessons on Mandarin or Spanish.

I've learned Japanese and part of the reason is that I thought kanji were attractive. I remember watching anime on TV when I was a kid and seeing the opening credits with Japanese characters looked soo cool.

For me, it's about the media. I'm interested in Japanese anime and manga, and now light novels.

I'm not at all interested in anything I've seen in other non-English languages, except possibly Korean now, since they seem to be producing a lot of stuff.

However, almost everything that I'd enjoy gets translated to English for both Japanese and Korean now, so there's a lot less incentive to learn them.

When I was a kid, most of the foreign culture I was exposed from came from the US, and then Japan followed with a small amount.

No wonder my second language was English and third language Japanese.

Never heard a single word of Mandarin in any media I was exposed to. I can understand Spanish very well but I do not count it as a learned language as it is too close to Portuguese (my first language).

Online everyone learns Japanese, in real life i have never encountered anyone learning it, while i know multiple people learning French.

Japanese media is quite popular, and many fans want to watch/read their favourite thing in its original language. This is probably the reason most people learn a language, and a huge reason why so many kids around the world speak English. Chinese culture doesn't have the same impact, yet. As to Spanish, most kids who want to learn Spanish can do so at school so there is no need to go above and beyond to learn Spanish on your own.

Ego.

Chinese evil. Communist. Bad. Bad Chinese. Bad bad. Cheap products.

Japanese. exotic. mystical. Samurai. Ninja. Anime. Good. Sony. Good. Good cars. Zen. Good.

Me good. Me learn Japanese. Me exotic and mystical. Super power. Me good. Me smart. Me learned Japanse. Me great.

Me me me. Me me me. Me me me.

1. Generally people using such systems to learn language only need to do so if they aren't immersed in the country where it is being spoken. I stopped using Anki for German after a while of living here, even though I'm still learning. Therefore, most language learners are doing so not because they want to live in the country but because they want to consume media written in that language

2. Japanese is becoming one of the most popular languages for foreign media, probably even surpassing English at this point. Anime is really huge now, particularly in the US. It has shifted from being a nerd thing to being of interest for the "cool kids" (if there is even such a thing now). Japan also had a huge and very interesting media industry in the 80s and 90s including some very novel video game concepts, most of which has not been translated

You learn Japanese for the media and culture; Mandarin for the financial opportunities; Russian for the reverse-engineering community; Spanish, French or Arabic to be able to speak with large diverse groups of people, typically for travel; Klingon, Na'vi, Esperanto or Elvish to fit in certain communities

Accordingly, the stereotypical CS major is attracted to Japanese and Klingon, the stereotypical Business major to Chinese. Even though few follow through because of the amount of work and perseverance required

> Chinese culture doesn't have the same impact, yet.

At this rate if 2/3rds of their popular media(manhua, games, animation) continues being cultivation fantasy featuring the exact same power system, tropes, character archetypes, often even setting(murim) and content, it never will.

Animanga were always poised to make it big, because for all their shortcomings, they have interesting, exotic(to us) themes/tropes/vibes, and go really hard on hyping scenes up.