I learned Japanese pretty much to prove, that people all over the earth are the same:

Why Japanese you ask? Because most westerners, who got to japan during the edo-era where astounded on how different japan was from them.
I for myself came to the conclusion that this is some nationalist ******** spat by either the Japanese (We are the chosen ones) or the Europeans (they are different from us, plus we are better).
Second reason was, that I wanted to see the difference why Japan got the turn to industrialization and modernization and others, like China or todays Thailand/Malaysia did not