Hmmm... As a kid I used to watch a certain TV channel that would show some old anime TV series, like
Speed Racer,
G-Force,
UFO Robo Grendizer. I used to draw grendizer battles when it wasn't airing

Not that I knew that these shows were japanese. To me, they were no different from other cartoons like Transformers, or, say, Exo-Squad.
Somewhere around the time I was in middle school
Sailor Moon and
Pokemon boom happened. Almost everybody watched those, but not a lot of people were willing to admit that ("you watch sailor moon? what are you, a girl?", "you watch pokemon? what are you, a five year old?"). But yeah, these were the ones i watched and knew that they've come from Japan.