Well, having been the Vice-president and co-founder of my college's Anime club I can't deny that there is a strong urge to learn Japanese. One reason is because even the best subtitling in the world doesn't always get some of the dialog across properly. Ranma 1/2 for example has numerous puns, but they only work in Japanese. Still, some Otaku really do take it to rather nasty extremes and I can imagine some think they'd be albe to go over there an just find work other than teaching English.
Anime for me though was always a secondary as the history and culture of Japan had an interest for me since we had a presentation on it in third grade. If I went I'd be "Screw the Anime, I got a dozen historical sites I want to go to and there is this one old road that has barly changed since the Tokigawa era that I want to take some time to hike along and stay at the traditional inns..." Sadly, going for the anime might be cheaper.
Back to languages, I wanted to learn(and still do) Cantonese and Mandrin, mainly because in 1997 Western Canada had a massive influx of Chinese leaving Hong Kong.
French, which we have to learn is the fifth most common language in this province, while the chinese languages hold second and third. Government work might require you knowning french, but i'd probably find more work these days knowing Chinese dialects.