I imported 15 Japanese ps3 games and the first batch arrived today. I tried playing Boku no Natsuyasumi and quit within the first 10 minutes because I couldn't understand anything. Arrhhh I'm so annoyed at myself. I've wasted so much money. I've only been learning for 4 months and I don't know why I thought my Japanese was good enough. I feel so demotivated.

LittleRedRidingHood Wrote:I imported 15 Japanese ps3 games and the first batch arrived today. I tried playing Boku no Natsuyasumi and quit within the first 10 minutes because I couldn't understand anything. Arrhhh I'm so annoyed at myself. I've wasted so much money. I've only been learning for 4 months and I don't know why I though my Japanese was good enough. I feel so demotivated.

"Ni No Kuni" has furigana over every kanji.

Hi thank you chamcham. I've already pre-ordered Ni no Kuni. Although I didn't know it had Furigana over every kanji. Thank you for the useful information.

Do you know any other games that use Furigana?

Funny, we had a thread about this quite recently. You could search it up and check if there are suggestions you like in there.

If you understand absolutely nothing then maybe you could shelve it and come back to it at a later time, but personally I don't mind keeping on even though I don't get everything. I've played a bit of Ookami, which also has furigana on everything but uses a lot of advanced vocabulary to fit its setting, and if I were to look up every word I didn't know it'd take several times longer to go through the dialogue. But with the context and having RTK and familiarity for the kanji etc I feel like I'm always getting what's going on, so it's still enjoyable to play.

I also always keep all games I play, so it's an option to play it again some time if I feel like I'd get more out of it.

Almost all of the zelda games use furigana. Zelda is one of the easiest game series to start with in Japanese IMO. The Ocarina of Time remake was a blast.

You might want to head on over to http://anime-manga.jp/CharacterExpressions/ and look at some basic osaka-ben for Ni No Kuni

The older Zelda games aren't really dialogue heavy though, are they? And does the remake of OOT have furigana?

But me, I'd love to play Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword. It's just that I'd have to go through so many steps of hacking the Wii and finding the games illegally, it'd just be easier to fork out all the money and import a Wii console with all the games.

Or I could give Dolphin another shot. Finding the games is really a pain though, and I guess we shouldn't discuss it on here too much.

Hashiriya Wrote:You might want to head on over to http://anime-manga.jp/CharacterExpressions/ and look at some basic osaka-ben for Ni No Kuni

lol, thanks for the link, good stuff.

A tip is to check out some gameplay on youtube to see that you can understand the level of Japanese in the game before you buy it. Ni no kuni seems like a pretty good beginner game, I've been watching a playthrough of the first couple of hours and even though I'm not very good at Japanese yet I can still get the gist of a lot of the sentences. The furigana made me learn some kanji compounds too in the process, pretty good stuff. Once I get a little better at the language I will definitely play it.

Some would argue that if you keep waiting until "you can understand that level of Japanese" you'll never start. You can't learn a language and then start reading texts that you can now understand. You'll never understand them until you start reading them, no matter how much grammer and vocab and core Anki decks you stock up on in preparation for rainy days.

Zlarp Wrote:Some would argue that if you keep waiting until "you can understand that level of Japanese" you'll never start. You can't learn a language and then start reading texts that you can now understand. You'll never understand them until you start reading them, no matter how much grammer and vocab and core Anki decks you stock up on in preparation for rainy days.

Fair enough. I wouldn't say to keep waiting until you understand everything of course, but if you can't understand anything at all I would think it's a good idea to first learn some grammar and build some vocabulary, having to look up every single word in a dictionary is neither enjoyable nor very effective I would think.

i totally agree... dive face first into whatever you wanted to learn the language for from the beginning. Otherwise, you are going to burn out in the long run. I've known people in the past who would learn Japanese to play games. They would study Japanese for a couple of hours a day and then spend the rest of the day playing games in English. In the end, they just burned themselves out because they didn't associate learning Japanese with having fun.

@ Algo... it might be a good idea to have at least Rtk and basic grammar learned yeh... I understand how that could be troubling.

TwoMoreCharacters Wrote:The older Zelda games aren't really dialogue heavy though, are they? And does the remake of OOT have furigana?

But me, I'd love to play Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword. It's just that I'd have to go through so many steps of hacking the Wii and finding the games illegally, it'd just be easier to fork out all the money and import a Wii console with all the games.

Or I could give Dolphin another shot. Finding the games is really a pain though, and I guess we shouldn't discuss it on here too much.

Remember that Dolphin requires a pretty powerful computer. My laptop can play Skyrim with decent settings (and Minecraft with 150 FPS), but on TP with Dolphin, the FPS goes down to 50% when I'm in ハイラル平原...
(I've played it on my other computer (which I left back home in Norway :c), which is more powerful, and it works perfectly, except from that it crashes occationally -- so remeber to state save often, and use 4 state saves in case it crashes whilst state saving.)

And you can find the gamecube edition and the Wii edition of TP on the ...uhm ... "Plunderers' Port".

And I understand most of what's said on TP even if I've studied Japanese only for about 6 months; having played OoT and MM in Japanese before helps though.

Also, Minish Cap (Search for "fushigi no boushi" for ROMs) is also pretty decent, though they omit some kanji which can be comfusing (I thought 鉱山 was 高山 because it was spelled as こう山...)

AlgoRhythmic Wrote:

Zlarp Wrote:Some would argue that if you keep waiting until "you can understand that level of Japanese" you'll never start. You can't learn a language and then start reading texts that you can now understand. You'll never understand them until you start reading them, no matter how much grammer and vocab and core Anki decks you stock up on in preparation for rainy days.

Fair enough. I wouldn't say to keep waiting until you understand everything of course, but if you can't understand anything at all I would think it's a good idea to first learn some grammar and build some vocabulary, having to look up every single word in a dictionary is neither enjoyable nor very effective I would think.

You did say you do understand the gist of the sentences, though, and that should be enough. As long as you have RTK under your belt and maybe some grammar (enough to know what "だ, は, を, で, の, と" and such do in a broad sense, I'd say, 5-10 hours of focused study should be plenty) you'll be fine. And don't you dare to look up all the words you don't know. You'll get mad and quit because it's annoying. Maybe do one or two lookups here and there, but all in all I'd say look up maybe 5% of the words you don't understand. Just sound the rest out with furigana and move on.

After all, you learned English without looking up all the words you don't know in a dictionary, you just copied what everyone else was doing and it turned out fine. (substitute your native language for English, of course, unless you're like me and you learned English as a third language this way as well).

LittleRedRidingHood Wrote:Hi thank you chamcham. I've already pre-ordered Ni no Kuni. Although I didn't know it had Furigana over every kanji. Thank you for the useful information.

Do you know any other games that use Furigana?

Pre-ordered? Ni no Kuni was released in Japan in late 2011.
If possible, get the Japanese "All-In-One" edition (http://www.play-asia.com/Ninokuni_Shirok...-4skt.html).

The American version (released this month) doesn't have Japanese text.

@chamcham Yes I pre-ordered the EU version. But that's because I want to enjoy the game since my Japanese is at beginner level. I suppose once I've played the game in English, I'll order the Japanese version. That way it might be easier to get around.

@TwoMoreCharacters I guess you're right, I could always come back to the games at a later stage. It's just that I was so excited to finally understand 50% of a Naruto episode that I got ahead of myself and I honestly thought I would be able to figure it out once I start playing the game. I feel pathetic now.

Thank you for your replies everyone.

LittleRedRidingHood Wrote:@chamcham Yes I pre-ordered the EU version. But that's because I want to enjoy the game since my Japanese is at beginner level. I suppose once I've played the game in English, I'll order the Japanese version. That way it might be easier to get around.

@TwoMoreCharacters I guess you're right, I could always come back to the games at a later stage. It's just that I was so excited to finally understand 50% of a Naruto episode that I got ahead of myself and I honestly thought I would be able to figure it out once I start playing the game. I feel pathetic now.

Thank you for your replies everyone.

You can download Japanese subtitles for Naruto and other anime.
Just google for "kitsunekko". They have Japanese and English subtitles for anime.

Much easier to study Japanese subtitles than to play a video game and look up every word while playing.

I think you misinterpreted TwoMoreCharacters. He said shelfing will always be a possibility, so the possibility of failure shouldn't keep you from trying out the game. If you understand 50% of a Naruto episode, you'll be fine, don't worry. I'm 3.5 months into my studies and am now playing Persona 4 in Japanese. It doesn't even have furigana, but I'm doing fine. Whenever I think it's too much I'll just go read Death Note or play some game with furigana, but most of the time I'm having so much fun with Persona that I don't want to stop.

I think I've learned more Japanese this was than with anything else.

Stian Wrote:Remember that Dolphin requires a pretty powerful computer. My laptop can play Skyrim with decent settings (and Minecraft with 150 FPS), but on TP with Dolphin, the FPS goes down to 50% when I'm in ハイラル平原...
(I've played it on my other computer (which I left back home in Norway :c), which is more powerful, and it works perfectly, except from that it crashes occationally -- so remeber to state save often, and use 4 state saves in case it crashes whilst state saving.)

And you can find the gamecube edition and the Wii edition of TP on the ...uhm ... "Plunderers' Port".

And I understand most of what's said on TP even if I've studied Japanese only for about 6 months; having played OoT and MM in Japanese before helps though.

Also, Minish Cap (Search for "fushigi no boushi" for ROMs) is also pretty decent, though they omit some kanji which can be comfusing (I thought 鉱山 was 高山 because it was spelled as こう山...)

Hmm yeah I do have a decent machine for being a gaming laptop. But when I tried a WW iso I finally managed to find (took forever), it was a bit sluggish and seemed to have an absolute crash after the first dungeon. The crash was probably just the iso's fault though? I know if you google around you might find solutions, I was half able to play this game after I found some suggestions on Dolphin configurations. Should try TP.

I did play The Minish Cap a bit! Forgot about GB emulators, those are reliable There seems to be good GBA emulators on the android Play Store now.

By the way, Norway, England, Japanese, Zelda... I could be wrong but I've thought you might be on UG, right? If so, that's funny because we've even talked about Zelda in the LoZ thread, I'm posting as Neer

LittleRedRidingHood Wrote:@chamcham Yes I pre-ordered the EU version. But that's because I want to enjoy the game since my Japanese is at beginner level. I suppose once I've played the game in English, I'll order the Japanese version. That way it might be easier to get around.

Hmm yeah I think the game has some replay value, but you will be surprised how much easier it is with Japanese subtitles. You should watching anime or even j-drama with Japanese subs if you find anything interesting.
http://kitsunekko.net/dirlist.php?dir=su...apanese%2F

my computer runs everything on Dolphin at 100%... even with all of the settings maxed out.. but I have a i5-3570k w/ GTX 670 in it. However, I don't think any laptop can do that presently. For a laptop, I do however recommend VBA-M 1022 as an awesome Gameboy Advance emulator. It can do HQ4x graphics which looks amazing.

I have also heard reports that a PSP emulator is available that works splendidly. I haven't investigated that, since I own a PSP and those are as hacked as can possibly be.

Anyway, if the PSP emulator works as well as I heard it does, you'll have a neverending supply of insanely Japanese games.

Start out with Danball Senki Boost (and it has a conveniently untranslated anime to go with it that looks quite spectacular). Thank me later. What a game. I'ma go play it now, 'scuse me.

Thank you for the subtitles link. Is there a website where I can download English subtitles for Japanese anime/games? Thanks

LittleRedRidingHood Wrote:Thank you for the subtitles link. Is there a website where I can download English subtitles for Japanese anime/games? Thanks

Just go to http://www.kitsunekko.net.
They have links for English and Japanese subtitles.

I have no idea where to find Japanese subtitles for PS3 games.

PSP emulators... I need to look into that :o

Btw RidingHood, are you doing RTK right now? If you are, work on finishing it, get into studying/reviewing vocabulary, do grammar if you want. Understanding enough to enjoy content (at least with the help of Japanese subs) will come. You didn't buy games in vein.

Thank you chamcham

@TwoMoreCharacters, Well I was doing RTK. I learned how to write 500 kanjis using Skritter and then all of a sudden I stopped around a month ago. I still don't know why. Now I'm concentrating on iKnow vocabulary and I'm at 2000 words.

Zlarp Wrote:You did say you do understand the gist of the sentences, though, and that should be enough. As long as you have RTK under your belt and maybe some grammar (enough to know what "だ, は, を, で, の, と" and such do in a broad sense, I'd say, 5-10 hours of focused study should be plenty) you'll be fine. And don't you dare to look up all the words you don't know. You'll get mad and quit because it's annoying. Maybe do one or two lookups here and there, but all in all I'd say look up maybe 5% of the words you don't understand. Just sound the rest out with furigana and move on.

After all, you learned English without looking up all the words you don't know in a dictionary, you just copied what everyone else was doing and it turned out fine. (substitute your native language for English, of course, unless you're like me and you learned English as a third language this way as well).

Ok fair enough, I get what you're saying. My original plan was to do Tae Kim and at least a large chunk of core6k before starting to tackle video games (and yes I have done RTK), but I might start a little earlier since you do have point and yes I do get the gist of most of the sentences in at least some of the easier games. I will go through the entire Tae Kim webpage once before tackling games though, that much I'm certain of. I've had enough problems that could be linked to basic grammar that I was lacking before (one example, I didn't know した is a conjugation of する, caused me a lot of unnecessary confusion). Here in Sweden I get exposed to so much English daily whether I want to or not and have been my entire life, but not so much in Japanese so I feel the need to create a foundation before starting to learn by immersion.

I still think my original post has a point though even if I also agree with you. If you don't know many Kanji readings for example, choosing a game without furigana and which is extremely Kanji heavy might not be a good idea yet, so doing some research first and choosing a game with a suitable difficulty level will be helpful I think.

I think Tae Kim is good to do. I'm not sure if it's neccessary, but I did it myself because I was too intimidated to start something without any grammar knowledge. I can't say how well I would be doing without having gone through Tae Kim (and the accompanying cloze deleted public Anki deck), but Tae Kim itself was definitely a good foundation. That's where I took my "5-10 hours of dedicated study" from, incidentally. I don't know if the numbers add up, but it feels like that's how much I did. Maybe I'm completely wrong though and it was 30 hours or something like that.

As for core decks... I started out wanting to do Core2k, at least. I did about ten sentences before realizing how horrendously boring it was and skipped it.