[Kaderin Triste]

Originally Posted by Coda

100% agreed!

Learning Japanese songs phonetically has come back to bite me a couple times, though. In both cases, I was idly singing along with the song when it finally clicked in my head what it was I was actually singing. And then the tears started flowing.

One time it just about made me fail my DDR song. (Riyu Kosaka's "true..." -- "dare no tame ni egao de iru no / dare no tame ni ikiteyuku yo / oshiete hoshii, anata no hoka ni irunda to / watashi ni dekiru koto / sore wa anata wasureru koto" -- "for whom do I smile? / for whom do I go on living? / please tell me who there is aside from you / the things you can do for me / are the things that you forget")

One time I was driving and I really had to struggle to stay focused on the road. (Kunitake Miyuki's "Miss You" -- the whole song is amazing so I can't really extract one bit, so here's a link to the lyrics: https://remywiki.com/MISS_YOU#Lyrics)

Riyu Kosaka's "Candy<3" comes to mind as one that did the opposite; instead of making me tear up, it made me giggle from how cute and lighthearted it is. ("kokoro ni niji kakete, nanairo no melody doko made mo sora takaku" -- "hang a rainbow from your heart, the seven-colored melody will take you as high as the sky")

There have been a few other Japanese songs that have gotten me choked up but I understood the lyrics just fine the first time. Crystal Kay's "Motherland" ("kaeru basho de aru you ni" -- "so that there will be a place to come home to") comes to mind off the top of my head.

Ah, see, I'm a big poser, other than the basic words that everyone picks up on from anime, I don't actually know Japanese. It would be fun to learn, but I am horrible at retaining languages (took 4 years of Spanish, literally only can remember a few words and silly phrases ex: tu casa es mi baño) I just like not horribly mangling pronunciations as I sing along. I feel so bad singing along with some of the j-pop songs that I like because I know I'm only getting maybe 1 word right in the whole song.
So I never actually know what I'm singing. Though some (most) songs have really powerful emotion in them, so it's not too hard to still pick up on what the main emotion is.