You have Questions? I have Answers!

Tough. I still don't know it very well! It can be made a lot easier if you have penpals that can help you converse and teach you new forms of grammar that might not get into the books in school classes. Kanji can also seem very daunting at first, but using flash cards and practicing making sentences with them can make that process a bit easier.

Here's a question . . What's one thing you like more about living in the USA, and one thing you like more about living in Japan, as far as the differences between both countries . .

Hmm, that's a tough one. Living in the US, I don't have to worry about feeling rude if I throw trash into a trash can, because there are enough trash cans out in public places so you typically don't have to worry about it. In Japan, it's very normal to take your trash home to separate it, as there are no public trash cans in most places. You might think this is not a big deal, but finish a drink in the middle of Tokyo and want to get rid of your bottle. It's honestly amazing that Japan is as clean as it is, because I've never been more tempted to litter in my life than running around with an empty drink can. In Tokyo though, everything is within walking distance. Everything. As long as you don't have some sort of injury or disability, you should be able to get from one end of Tokyo to the other with your own two feet, using only Subways. That is definitely my favorite part of this place. It makes it so easy to get to where you want to go, even if that place is a long way away. In America, you either have to have your own car and struggle with driving and parking and traffic, or you have to take the bus, which can take forever. Japan's transit system is simply the best, for good reason.

My question is, how is anime there? I've talked to a few Japanese people online and I had one that said she didn't like anime. I thought anime was embedded in to Japanese culture. How is anime viewed in Japan?

Great question. Anime is for kids. That's pretty much the consensus around Japan. The target audience is kids. Depending on the anime, that may be a target audience of 5-8 year olds, or 10-14 year olds, or 15-18 year olds or even a little older than that, but even the more racey anime are still considered cartoons, just like cartoons are considered in America. If you went up to an adult in America and said 'What do you think of Gravity Falls?' and they weren't a nerd, they'd probably say they have no idea what you're talking about. It's the same with anime. Manga, however, is a little wider spread. Because it's read material, people read it on their daily train commute, during breaks, all over the place. I see guys reading manga more often than girls, typically, and it seems like there are more manga that appeal to wider audiences than anime does. Manga have the flexibility of having wider ranges of themes and characters, including very adult characters (not like porn, but like old men doing old men things. Ok but also porn.) We get a little bit of tunnel-vision here in the states when it comes to the anime and manga culture. First, there's a MASSIVE amount of manga that does not get translated to English. If you took one book from every Manga that was not translated into English and put them all in a warehouse, they'd fill that warehouse. Doujinshi (self-published manga) alone is a massive market for which they have Comiket that sees half a million people go through every year. What other conventions have 500,000 people walk through them? Even manga published by the big companies sometimes don't make it to the states if they're not popular enough in Japan first. A lot of the aforementioned adult-targeted manga just wouldn't make it here in the states. That said, if the manga isn't popular enough, it doesn't get an anime, and is therefore never seen in the states, never translated. What's the meaning of life? I think that's for each person individually to discover on their own.