When I chose to learn it in high school, it was the expression of getting a new challenge for a autistically gifted, yet mind numbingly bored kid. I had stopped due to life and my frustration learning Kanji, which I’m working on it now in Wanikani - that helped tremendously. I’ve come to integrate a lot of Japanese ways into my life since then - food, pop culture, karate, kendo and various other things. Nowadays I picked up on it again for the desire to read more things in the original language to skip translation errors, and later to travel and interact with locals. It might be fun to surprise people that one is not the average 煩い米兵の外人 (loud american foreigner).