How did they react after they found out?
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Only my family since I buy vk shit all the time but other than my mom making fun of it sometimes as a joke, they don’t mind.
My sister once thought I liked kpop cuz of my Merry posters in my room.
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I’ve been into vk since I was 15 (33 next month) so my family knew and were fine with it, had one friend who loved Metal so X JAPAN was his favorite and other friends made fun of it unless it was heavier like the heavier the GazettE or DIR EN GREY and a friend of mine liked the pillows.
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Almost everyone I know irl knows I listen to Japanese music.
I started listening to Japanese music in the late 90s as a kid, and specifically Jrock and Vk around 2005. I grew up in an all-black community in the state of Georgia, so the overall mindset was fairly closed-minded in general. Not to mention, the internet wasn’t like it is today - there were no memes about ppl having anime OPs on shuffle, or Japanese oldies going “viral”, etc. Japanese music just wasn’t as big a piece of the public consciousness as it is today.
So naturally, I’ve gotten the entire spectrum of responses to me listening to Japanese music. Pretty much everything you could imagine. One of my favorites were, “THEY COULD BE SAYING N#GG3R AND YOU WOULDN’T EVEN KNOW IT!!”, smh lmao.
But anyways, I’ve been listening to Japanese music in some form since I was 12. I’m 35 now and wayyy too grown to give a fuck what anyone thinks 
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I used to make my mom listen to my music in the car
she wasn’t into it but she kind of liked Inugami Circus Dan
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Yeah, of course. Wasn’t notable in Hong Kong, and I got to the UK a bit older so was over the insecurity about my music taste that I might have potentially felt had I been a young teen.
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Think my father saw a CD or something on my desk and offhandedly mentioned in some conversation w/ me about music that I listened to some “Japanese women or men —or something”. I’ve generally kept pretty tight-lipped on vk (alongside anime, etc.) growing up, but the difference is now that I listen equally, if not more to other genres of music, so I have less of a need to mention it IRL.
I’ll reiterate that kids here in the states have K-pop, love it or hate it, to thank for somewhat normalizing Asian androgyny in the current era. Before you would get ostracized for listening to stuff like vk unless you were in an emo clique (which my school didn’t have.) Even with other Japanese students in college I had more conversations about Nissy and J-pop stuff, rather than vk. Though, I saw someone do their senior speech presentation on vk, which was pretty neato.
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I had the opportunity to play The Last Rockstars in front of a normal person and got zero reaction, positive or negative, which was a surreal experience.
Suffice to say, yeah I don’t really hide the fact that I listen to Japanese music. It does consume a non-negligible part of my listening diet, so it usually comes up if I discuss music with a person at length. I usually try to find common ground in music tastes though, so it’s not often I’ll go in depth with it.
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When I was 17 I printed pictures of Hitsugi and Gackt and slapped them on my wall, so my family knew. They didn’t say anything, either they thought it’s a phase or they just didn’t care. These days I’m not close enough with anyone (who doesn’t already know) to have the “what music do you listen to” talk so it never comes up.
No one’s ever made fun of me for my taste in music, but I also don’t think that I would’ve felt particularly offended even if someone did. I’m not forcing anyone to listen to stuff they don’t want to hear, if they don’t like it they don’t have to listen.
My mom got me a Yellow Magic Orchestra shirt for Christmas a couple of years ago, so that was pretty cool.
But then again I did make her listen to Dum Spiro Spero on our home stereo system when it came out.
Oh and I did give a mini presentation on Kyo in a college Japanese class.
In all seriousness though, I’m pretty nonchalant about sharing music. I’ll at least read the room before sharing something particularly outrageous, or at least mix in some other languages.
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My family and friends have known about my interest in Japanese music since the beginning. I don’t think they really understood it though. I’d talk to my sister about it all the time and try to get her to listen to some, but she became a KPOP fan instead. Guess I failed that mission big time. I also advertise my interest on my vehicle. I have a big lynch. sticker on the back window. I’m sure most Americans have no idea what it means. They probably think it’s my last name or something. I also have a Japanese flag sticker that I’ve noticed seems to offend some here.
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My family knows that I listen to Japanese music and they have never said anything negative about it. I wouldn’t care if they did though. Sometimes I share music with my brother, who is the person that got me into metal music when I was a kid. He doesn’t seem to mind that they are not singing in English. The other day I was playing Yoshinori Sugimoto in my car and could see my mom nodding her head along with the music. A few of my friends know about the music I listen to and they don’t seem to care either. It’s not their cup of tea, nor is the music they listen to my cup of tea. To each their own.
I mainly listen to old school kote kei and i can’t play it around anyone or they complain LMFAO i apologise to my housemate when she comes in my room while i have vkei on T-T my dog even left the room once
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My whole family listens except my mom, but I suppose my father was the earliest of us he had death note in his super secret ssd disk along with classified government documents which I found like 15 years later but now he listens to folk mainly and a couple songs like nova scotia and solitary man. I won’t lie his music tastes are on par with mine (his first albums were mezzanine, demon days, don’t believe the truth). I went there a couple months ago taking my mum to the hospital and all my ungrateful siblings whom I wish I could trade for a coco star, I saw tat they listen to gackt and edgy anime openings I suppose I’m the only one who has ever gone deep enough. I don’t blame them. Hell I never share personal music but I felt so bad that I had to grace them but them being the ingrates they are just shat on it all and wasted it all I even invited them to 4 trackers with a generous 100 gb upload, and to think I’m going to entrust them with my company? FAT FUCKING CHANCE. In truth I showed it to only girls the ones who truly complete a man, and you know I’m glad I did we had a lot of fun (I busted out my personal summer dive collection) and lastly my mother, while we were waiting for chemo, she loved the oldie songs I had and I crammed in my favorite song in there which happens to be japanese.
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the reaction from my family to Visual Kei basically was just. “so again the quirky japanese, huh”.
usually I use my Visual Kei music passionately as music to annoy my sister (she has also more than enough stuff music to annoy me with) but I was actually even able to bring her to like one singular track from Xa-Vat (Numan-Roxette). My mother found quite some Visual Kei bands to look like fun, but never really had interest to get further into it. I don’t think I should bother to try to get my father and brother into that because they have a certain anti-asian view for media consum, because they get pretty annoyed about what for hopeless Otakus we three are lol.
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Some of them, yeah. I can play some Diru ballads in front of my mom and some more fast-paced songs when driving around with my friends. They got used to it.
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It’s basically all I talk about, other than Pokémon news.
My mom loves Dir en grey.
Since 2004, bitches.
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I mean, it was pretty hard to hide from my parents (not that I wanted to hide it) back when I started out cuz I kept asking for vk CDs and DVDs for birthday and Xmas, and those eventually found their way into the hi-fi system in the living room, haha. They eventually got used to it, I think they still might remember a couple of artist names like BUCK-TICK or Miyavi.
With friends, I’ve been extremely lucky cuz they fall into two camps: they either are very open-minded about music and don’t really bat an eye at my taste, or they’re just as much of a fan of Japanese music (vk and J-rock in particular) as me. It was amazing to get to go down to the local anime/manga gathering and geek out about music (coupled with an online message board and a J-rock party series in the capital city that connected us with other fans in the country), lots of good connections were forged and fun times were had, some of which last till today, some died out, but that’s life.
That said, I usually don’t mention Japanese music outright when getting to know new people… gotta feel around a bit first to see what type of stuff they’re into and if I estimate they won’t be weirded out too much if I drop the “J-bomb”, lmao.
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My family knows I like DIR EN GREY and that I listen to Japanese music, and I have one friend that listens to Japanese music as well. I’m starting hide the fact that I listen to Japanese music less and less, especially because when I have told other people that I listen to Japanese music, there has almost always been a positive reaction, with them going “Oh yeah, that stuff’s cool”. It’s not that I’m ashamed of the music that I listen to, it’s just that I’m pretty secretive about that stuff. But yeah, my parents have never freaked out about any music that I listen to, especially heavier genres of music, so I’ve been mostly comfortable sharing my taste of music with them at times. I don’t plan on telling anyone I like Visual Kei though, just because I feel like that’s something that people should find on their own first.