This article presents a narrative of the Japanese learning history of Assaf, a Syrian refugee who studied Japanese during the civil war. Assaf is a Syrian who was born in Lebanon and is currently enrolled in a graduate school in Tokyo through the Japanese government's JISR program. Due to the educational policies of his parents and the political instability of the situation, Assaf moved several times, changed schools, and gradually became more introverted. After entering university in Lebanon, he began to study Japanese on his own to find "something that was my own". Assaf describes his Japanese studies as a "hobby," but he continued to study for three hours a day, he was searching the Internet for a learning method that suited him. And he passed the N2 test while he was in Lebanon. Assaf's story of self-study illustrates the complex intersection of the different capitals and identities he possessed and provides valuable material for current studies in Japanese language education and second language acquisition about who, why, and how people learn languages.