ABSTRACT
This chapter asks whether Australian tertiary learners of Japanese come to introductory Japanese courses to learn the language for strategic, economic or intellectual gains as expected by policy-makers. Discussion of the history of Japanese language education, policies, classroom experiences and motivation of students in introductory Japanese courses at an Australian university shows that the students come to the introductory Japanese courses for complicated and multifaceted reasons. Japanese popular culture is an important drawing card, but the interactive and fun classroom experiences also entice them to the super-diverse multicultural and multidisciplinary classroom communities, where the students consume the learning of Japanese.
