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Generally speaking, if you are a weaboo and/or otaku and you reveal your hobby, you generally tend to end up on the receiving end of all sorts of unbelievably irritating questions. This is my list of the most annoying questions I've heard as an otaku/weaboo. 1. "Is that a cartoon?" Almost every anime fan gets asked this at some point, though generally speaking, this is an event that was a lot more common when I first started watching anime. To be blunt, American cartoons tend to be one of two types... the kid-oriented or the adult-oriented comedy (Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park). However, anime's sheer variance leads a lot of fans - including me - to want to clearly delineate a difference between the two, despite the fact that the actual Japanese anime definition includes Western cartoons. 2. "Why do you hate your country?" This is perhaps the dumbest question I've ever heard, but I've been on the receiving end of it countless times during my weaboo life. The fact is, I don't hate my country. My country does a lot of stupid things, but it raised me, it helped form my personality, and it has kept me fed. I simply prefer to study Japanese culture and language over American. Unfortunately, trying to explain that this is essentially a matter of aesthetic tastes is pretty pointless in the case of those who ask this question (since they've already made their own conclusions). 3. "Why are you dressing up like that?" When you cosplay, this is perhaps the most unbelievably obvious question you can ever get. Back when I still cosplayed, it drove me insane to be asked why I was dressing up that way when it was bloody obvious I was doing it for fun because I liked the anime/books/etc it was based off of. 4. "Why is there a poster of a cartoon character on your wall?" This gets old, fast. When I still bothered buying swag, it was as annoying as hell to have the occasional visitor to my room ask this and similar questions about the swag in my room. 5. "Why do you like the Japanese when they are the ones who started WWII?" This is mostly a question asked by someone who has only read US history books or high school level world history textbooks... WWII was the results of both sides' arrogance and over a half-century of bitter economic competition, preceded by an even more arrogant series of attempts to turn Japan into a Western satellite country (ie. late nineteenth and early twentieth century China). That said, the question has absolutely nothing to do with why I like Japan. I like Japan because its unique cultural development has so many interesting aspects to study, and I am fully aware of the insanity of war-era Japan and the cultural quirks that led to it, unlike the people who ask this question. 6. "Japanese games are all the same... why do you play them?" This is a more recent question and one of the few that has a legitimate point, though it is made from ignorance (usually some newbie listening to a long-time vet complain). The fact is, otaku media, in particular their games, are slow to change... The shifts in the market are slow, and so gluts of certain types of games are endemic to the industry. The same applies to all otaku media, really. Japanese business-people hate change and are slow to adapt to it. The eccentric exceptions are just that... exceptions. The answer to the question I usually give is that I honestly just enjoy Japanese style more than Western when it comes to telling a story, and more than half of my reason for living is experiencing good stories. 7. "That Japanese sword look like it would break with a single whack of this hammer... why don't you just buy a broadsword?" lol... this question I got when I was showing off my 日本刀 （a katana actually made in Japan in the old manner) to another guy who does broadsword fencing. The simple answer to this question that I gave him is that my sword is prettier, because I didn't want to get into the arguments about the difference in purpose. The more complex answer is that katanas make more sense in an era without metal armor than a broadsword (katanas are designed to slice, as opposed to the way western blades are designed to smash and crush as much as cut). Again, there is also the aesthetic, lol. 8. "Do you support what the Japanese did in China during WWII?" Now this question... I've never got how people can ask this question. Do people really think that even a weaboo would lack that much common sense and clarity of thought? Seriously?! Of course I don't in any way support Japan's actions during WWII. Only someone who hasn't read history could have. In regards to America, there were mitigating circumstances and legitimate reasons, but China was another matter entirely. China, for all intents and purposes, was basically a helpless, defenseless region (I don't call it a country because it wasn't and hadn't been since Britain won the wars in the nineteenth century), and there was absolutely no need for any of the excesses Japan undertook during the invasions and occupation there. The same goes for Korea. I almost punched the last person who asked me this question.