Japanese is the world’s 9th largest spoken language, with over 130M speakers. Excluding Japan, there are 5M others who speak Japanese (mostly Japanese descendants in Hawaii and Brazil), with a certain level of proficiency. In the social and business environment, Japanese language services have become extremely important.

Japan is one of the leading industrial powers worldwide and, given its low natural resources, it has been remarkable for economic growth since World War II. Japan is known for its strong working ethics and the high level of industry-government cooperation. 

1. Did you know that the Japanese population is actually the biggest consumer of goods and services specifically food, clothing, travel and entertainment? In fact, according to a report, Japanese consumers manage to spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year on these amenities. Therefore, learning Japanese and catering to these Japanese consumers will automatically bring business to you.
2. Japan stands tall to be the 2nd largest economy in the world. It is also the fastest growing and the most diverse economy in the entire Asian continent. It has a GDP of $4.9 trillion as well as, is home to companies like Sony, Toshiba, Casio, Honda, Toyota, etc.
3. As the stereotype goes, Asians are considered to be the smarter ones of the world. Living up to this name, the Japanese are excellent innovators. Considering their situation as being a geographically isolated country with extremely limited resources, they have emerged to be one of the most futuristic countries of the world. They have turned their biggest weakness into their strongest strength possible.
4. The Japanese speaking community makes up for the internet’s third-largest community. Right after English and Chinese speaking communities. An estimate of over 88 million Japanese of the world’s online population tune in into the internet every single day.
5. If you haven’t guessed already, Japanese culture is super diverse. This means that Japanese culture is influenced by many other Asian cultures and languages. Therefore learning this one language and becoming a part of this culture will open up doors to many other cultures and languages.
6. Japanese is notoriously one of the toughest languages in the world to master. In fact, most of the popular languages are European languages like Spanish, French, German or Italian but never Japanese. This means that learning Japanese is most definitely going to set you apart from the crowd.
7. If you are active on social media, you’re probably already aware of the massive craze over Japanese culture in the form of anime, sushi, Manga, origami, bonsai, etc. Many of these fan bases of all these cultural exports encourage their members to learn the Japanese language. 
8. As mentioned before, Japanese culture and language is highly influenced by other Asian cultures and languages. This means that learning this one language is going to help you learn or at least make you aware of all the different Asian languages like Chinese and Korean.
9. Although Japanese has a notorious reputation of being the toughest language in the world, it is not as tough as you might think. Indeed Japanese has a much different writing system than English or any other European language in the world, with that said, you don’t have to achieve proficiency in Japanese to understand the language. Instead, you can just achieve fluency in certain aspects of the language and get by.
10. Did you know that Japanese grammar is arguably much simpler than European language grammar? This is because most of the Japanese nouns have no genders, no accompanying articles and no plural forms. Additionally, there are only two verb tenses, namely present and past. And any irregularity in verbs is extremely rare.
11. As stated previously, the Japanese truly enjoy life. They do not hesitate to spend on what makes them happy. Similarly, Japanese are considered to be international tourists. With most of them shelling out more than $16.8 million to visit destinations all over the world.
12. If you are a tech lover, you are well aware that the Japanese are the tech leaders of the world. From optical media to industrial robotics and from semiconductors to fermentation processes, this country is living in the future.

In contrast to most western languages, Japanese has is an honorific language with a wide grammar system for overly expressing politeness and formality. Overall in Japanese, there are three main levels of politeness: simple (‘kudaketa’), simple polite (‘teinei’) form and advanced polite (‘keigo’). In Japanese society, the majority of the relationships are unequal, assigning a particular person a typically higher position that is dependent on a number of factors, including employment, age, experience or psychological conditions. The person with lower status should use a courteous form of speech, while the other person can be straightforward. Strangers talk politely to each other and refrain from using each others’ names. Planning to learn Japanese? Join Multibhashi today!