Hiya, Suki chan!
As for dubbed anime, I heard a terrible story from CPU san; when Rurouni Kenshin (the English title is Samurai X, I think) was dubbed, some samurai character spoke in strong South American dialects!!
The way of speech has strong connection with each one's personality, but dubbed anime spoils it, I'm afraid.
When a British comedy show, "Little Britain" was on Japanese TV, the translator did not pay attention to characters' dialects. Every line was translated into standard Japanese, which made the show not so funny. How's Spanish subtitle of Dragon Ball? The hero, Goku, speaks like a bumpkin in original Japanese anime. Are his words translated into an ordinary Spanish?
Esperanto is the movement to invent an international language by mixing various languages.
Esperanto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I like the idea, but they should have taken account of Asian languages.
After I went back to Japan, and after I stopped using English in daily conversation, I gradually forget how to use prepositions! You know, we don't have any preposition, though Japanese language has very complicated particles. I hope my English ability will be recovered by my new job...
I didn't know about Liza Dalby, but her story sounds very interesting. I watched a TV programme on Maiko, a traditional Japanese dancer girls. It seemed very hard -- even to native Japanese -- to learn such traditional thingy. Still, I know that some foreign people learn quite a lot about Japanese culture. In my Uni, a student from Czech is doing MA for Japanese literature; he memorizes several "rakugo" (traditional funny stories) and performs them on stages. It is simply amazing.
Some of my friends own their own kimono, some don't. Usually, we wear kimono at the ceremony of Coming of Age Day, when we are 20 years old. Also, on New Year Day, when attending at wedding party (we have a special white kimono for the bride as well), on graduation ceremony, etc. In Kyoto, I saw old ladies wore kimono as their daily clothes.
It takes 15 minutes for me to wear kimono properly, but my sis does within 5 minutes. She attended Japanese dance class once, so that she is get accustomed to wear kimono.