Personally, I want to be able to read Japanese media (mostly games) that have no English release or at best have a slightly questionable fan translation. The ga

Personally, I want to be able to read Japanese media (mostly games) that have no English release or at best have a slightly questionable fan translation. The games I'd already playing provide _a degree_ of passive immersion, as they often only have Japanese audio and leave background elements untranslated, which is useful and motivating. It'd also be nice to some that do have an English release in their native language. Were I not a native English speaker, I suspect I'd feel the same way about English. Mandarin may be more useful/practical in some sense, but I don't come across non-English or Japanese texts often, so it's not as immediately useful to me. I'm not sure why the language is so seemingly popular, but I suspect the popularity of Japanese games and anime in the West is one of the factors.