I do think if people really like Japanese video games that they should learn Japanese. It’s been pretty fulfilling just being able to play games in Japanese with less and less struggle as time goes on. Also bonus points if you know English is that a lot of Japanese games when you play the Japanese version they also have a ton of English in them anyway which can help at times. I just think learning another language is cool especially if you engage with aspects of the larger culture of that language to begin with.
There’s things that happen when you learn a language that’s used prominently in popular media outside of being able to understand that popular media though. You can talk to people you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to talk to. I think talking to people and meeting new people is great. There’s a lot of unique personalities in the world and most of them don’t speak the same language you do. I think we can all learn new things by speaking to as many people as possible.
Sometimes I run into using Japanese randomly. I’ll be wearing something with Japanese text on it or something and some random old guy at the grocery store will ask about it and turns out he knows Japanese so we can chat in Japanese for a moment. I have a Gradius shirt and old Japanese guys love my Gradius shirt. I also get to do things like meet lots of Japanese speakers in my community and take part in cultural events which is really cool because you can meet a lot of people and eat a lot of food. Food is another great thing that comes along with learning a new language. You can for instance search around about that food and find recipes for it in the original language and suddenly you have a high end restaurant in your kitchen at home. Meeting people I think is cool for your soul and maybe you’ll make a new friend and you guys can have margaritas together on the beach classic style. Eating food is always really cool.
You can read a novel or a comic book in another language. I think that speaks for itself. It’s like having a superpower. You can negate the original region locking, language, with your mind.
I went to a Friday night casuals event last night for Tekken 8 for the first time and turns out a couple of the players also know Japanese. See, random Japanese. It’s everywhere. So are most languages. Sometimes I just hear people speaking Japanese in public and I’m like haha I kinda know what they’re talking about and that’s fulfilling in itself. Eavesdropping in a Second Language: pretty fun.
I live in Tucson, Arizona in the US and I’ve been studying Japanese for three years. It comes up in my life daily and every day I’m thankful for my choice to commit to learning a new language because of the friends I have made and the silly games I’ve gotten to play.
Addendum: I forgot to mention jokes. You can make new jokes in ways you never would have thought possible if you only had one brain. Learning a second language gives you a second brain which is capable of making new jokes that are probably stranger.