FF3 is good. FF4 just came out last week and is even better.. Dragon Quest 4 came out last month and in the coming months we can expect Dragon Quest 5 and 6 to hit the DS. There are tons of great RPGs and even other great games on the DS. It's all a matter of what you're looking for. There's probably too much, as I have a backlog of ridiculous proportions thanks to how good the DS is.

nac_est wrote:

Anyway, for now I'm sticking to Zelda for the furigana, unless someone suggests something even better.

Good idea I reckon. I'm just about to complete the English version and really enjoyed it.

I think i have thoroughly gone through the various topics of this part of the forum and if i found this reading tremendous interesting  it has also  given me a serious headache and raised a lot of questions (as a matter of fact just 3 questions   please carry on reading  ....)

I  Nintendo DS vs PDA vs  Elec Dict
why a DS rather than a PDA with kingkanji and other Anki 
why a DS rather an electronic dictionnary ? to be quite honest if only 10% of what i'v read on different websites is true then I don't see the point of having an electronic dictionnary : the DS is cheaper , A LOT more flexible (you can buy other games ) , provide other features (wi fi, USB connection to PC)   . How can electronic dictionnary still exist if the gap is so huge ?

II  How to set up an efficient system between RETKJ , a DS  and a other SRS (Anki , Supermemo , khatsumemo , mnemonise ....)
it'not like you can sync them
I mean I don't know to what extent the members of this communauty back up the ideas of katzu but it really seems convincing to me . But it implies an other SRS .... When you add a DS game which doesn't fullfil exactly the same goal (vocabulary , sentence , calligraphie , use ,etc...)  . It makes 3 different software.... totally impossible to synchronize even i read something about a plugin
This issue increases in complexity with the problem of kanji chain : currently you can't do it with RETKJ right ? even if I read somewhere that  a website for the 2nd book was on discussion  . And you can do it with Anki since you can input anything. But to a certain extent the Khatzu system alleges to take care of this .... so MAYBE it's not that important ...IF and only IF you back up the theories of Khatzu which raises a whole other problem ....
I dread a loss of time , energy and knowledge  to try to be at the same level everywhere.....
But when i look at the posts it seems that the most proficient member use all of them.... It's both very impressive and VERY CONFUSING and I'd like to know more about their experiment

III  In the jungle of DS software which one is broadely deemed as the best ?
until now 2 titiles seem to stand out : kanji sono mama rakuhi jiten and Kanken DS2
If there isn't really a top of the top as i fear  then which one fits the best someone who completed RTK1 ?
Can't the more experienced members   make up a kind of up to date list ?

Last edited by ghinzdra (2008 January 24, 8:29 am)

I have recently received a DS and several games, in particular:

Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten
Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu
Kanken DS 2
Tadashii Kakitori Kun

The Sono Mama Rakubiki Jiten is essentially a J/J - J/E - E/J dictionary and I have been using it lately in place of PADict as it has much more vocabulary and better definitions along with example sentences.  I highly recommend it for anyone studying Japanese seriously instead of an electronic dictionary (but not to replace a PDA for SRS-type software).

Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu is a bit above my current level.  (As a point of reference I am basically starting to focus on JLPT2 studying.)  I think it will be good for me in another 6-8 months, but right now it is a little bit . . .

Kanken DS2 is a pretty good game.  I am sure that most people could never fully master all of it's levels since it goes to Kanken level 1.  I have already passed the 10 kyu and 9kyu levels and I think it is another good tool for reinforcing your kanji knowledge while also practicing your reading capabilities.

Tadashii Kakitori Kun was highly recommended to me by Fabrice-san and I have to say that it is by far the best investment in the DS for someone who is at JLPT 4 / 3 / 2 level as you get to practice many basic kanji based on school grade level.  I am currently working on the 3rd grade and I am finding it challenging (ie not too boring) but also a lot of fun.  The teacher in that game is quite comical at times.  When you don't use it for a few days he greets you with a nice "Hisashiburi desu ne"!!   

Well, I am sorry for the long-winded post, but I wanted to share my views as Wrightak asked as well as to hopefully help anyone at or near the same level as I on some good recommendations on what to get.

For those living in the US, I was able to get my games from Kyoto through Ebay without any trouble and they arrived within 1 week.  It was great service.  The vendor I ordered through was kyoto_temple_artist.  I contacted him by e-mail and he custom prepared an e-bay listing for me with the games that I wanted with a reduced combined shipping cost. 

Good luck,

Jon

Hey, just a comment on DS vs dedicated electronic dictionary. (Disclaimers: I haven't used the DS dictionary, I don't use my PDA for reviewing flashcards. I haven't played ALL the DS kanji games, but I do have three or four.)

When I decided to "get serious" about studying Japanese, I bought myself a Canon wordtank. It has a variety of really awesome functions that I'm not convinced are present in the DS dictionary, like really high level vocabulary and a plethora of examples of idiomatic expressions with examples. Of course, you can look up kanji by stroke, and you can highlight kanji and then jump to their entry in a different dictionary. There are J-J / J-E / E-J / E-E dictionaries, as well as a Japanese thesaurus and an English one. I really appreciate the Kanji dictionary, where the info about the stroke order, the radicals, the historically equivalent kanji (for kanji that have changed recently), and examples on the nuances of usage. There are something like 11 dictionaries in the wordtank that I bought, and that was three years ago. I'm sure they've come a long way since then. I think, though, vocabulary-wise, I was most impressed when I stumbled across the English-to-Japanese entry for the concept "unified string theory". This is a fairly obscure physics term, and the dictionary had an entry for it. From what I've seen in three years of use, wordtanks cover the vocabulary from an amazingly broad spectrum of subjects, and I rarely have trouble tracking down words or determining which of the suggested words I should use.

I bought my DS about two years ago, now, and I picked up a couple of kanji games around the same time. Some of them are too difficult for me, even on easy, and some of them are awesome. If you're carrying around a DS anyway, that dictionary card might not be all that bad of an idea to purchase.

On the other hand, if your only Japanese dictionary is on your DS, then how can you play other non-kanji games in Japanese? Or, even with kanji games, let's say that a word comes up that you are able to remember the furigana for, but you can't remember what the word itself means. How can you look it up, save for a slow paper dictionary? I suppose you could write down the word and look it up later, but I've found that having my dictionary beside me as I play through "Mario&Luigi RPG 2", "Zelda:Phantom Hourglass", "Mother", or even some of my kanji games is really helpful. I can immediately check what a word means, and I can progress through games with the aid of my dictionary entirely because it is a separate, dedicated device.

So, as you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of having *both* a high-end dictionary *and* a DS with some kanji games on it. Obviously, this is not cheap, but I feel that the amount of use that I get out of my dictionary and my DS was entirely worth the initial investment.

There's my two cents.

-ang

Ok, I just timed it at 8 seconds, so it's not 15-20. I haven't used it in 6 months or so, so my memory was a little tainted by my irritation with its slowness when I got my newer electronic dictionary.

But in the end it's all a question of what works for you.

I had forgotten why I had bought the dictionary for my DS to begin with, but I remember it now. It had kanji lookup with the stylus, which is all kinds of awesome. Draw the kanji with the correct stroke order, and it will make a pretty good guess. So nice.

Up until then, I had used an older Sharp e-dict for looking up kanji by stroke count or by radicals, and it was really hit-or-miss for me. I had a lot more luck with the DS, because even with its slower startup time compared to an electronic dictionary, I had a better chance to find the kanji I wanted faster. So the net amount of time I spent using it was probably less.

But now that has all changed for me, because there are now electronic dictionaries that will let you look up kanji by drawing them with a stylus on an LCD touchpad. So I can save even more time looking stuff up. So yeah, I like my Sharp papyrus just fine, and I don't use my DS much anymore for kanji lookup. Both a solid job of figuring out my kanji squiggles, but the new Sharp is faster for me.

So I guess even among electronic dictionaries, there are different kinds with different lookup styles. It's all a question of what suits your style best. I suck at stroke counts, but I'm good at drawing them, so the touchpad kind works best for me, even if it is a bit bulky.

Last edited by rich_f (2008 January 24, 12:00 pm)

jondesousa wrote:

Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu is a bit above my current level.  (As a point of reference I am basically starting to focus on JLPT2 studying.)  I think it will be good for me in another 6-8 months, but right now it is a little bit . . .

Try to fail completely at the first test, or if that's the game I'm thinking about, where you have to enter some date at the beginning, enter a recent date to pretend you are very young and you will be able to start at Grade 1.

I'm not surprised that the dictionary on the DS is not the best option if you want to do a quick lookup for a single word, probably the portable electronic dictionaries are best suited for that.

Text size: to be fair, "Sono Mama ~" has an option to increase and decrease the text size, similarly to a web browser, there's only 3 or 4 steps though, but enough to make out the complex kanji.

Battery life: if you're new to the DS it's good to notice that the LCD display shuts down when you close the DS. You can also go to the settings page and reduce the brightness level to the next-to-lowest setting, the battery will last longer and unless you're standing outside in the sun, you shouldn't have difficulty reading the screen. You also really don't need sound while playing any of the kanji games, which will also help with the battery. You can use it for a while like this.

When I experimented again with kanji chains in December, I found it was fun to go through the dictionary, input one of the characters I learned, and then scan for other compounds which contained only known characters, try to remember the correct reading, and then look the definitions and sentences. Like this you can actually flip through the pages of the dictionary, and jump from one sentence to another by following words you don't know.

You're welcome. I just checked again, that's the title I was thinking about. I didn't notice the "Heisei" era compound back then, I think I've figured it now, so it looks like you have to enter your birthdate, relative to one of the Japanese eras? I didn't know Japanese counted like this. Anyway, I also found out that as you punch the "year" arrows, have a look at the top screen, top -right, the resulting level is shown. Try to get age "0" and you'll get level 1

Note: only read this post if you are wondering how you can using the DS dictionary for sentence-mining, because it is a very long, boring, and somewhat confusing post.

I've found the DS dictionary a boon to my AJATT style sentence mining.  If you are interested in it for that, here is how I use it and why I think it is a pretty good option:

First, I find a sentence with an unknown word from a website or manga or whatever.  I use the stylus to write the word in the DS to find out it's pronunciation.  Then I can type the sentence into the SRS in the question field.  After that, I take all (or most) of the example sentences that the DS provides for that word, and put those in the answer field.  Usually there are between 2-4 but more sometimes depending on how varied the usage of the word is.  These sentences reinforce the usage of the unknown word.

As I am typing the example sentences in, I usually come across another couple unknown words.  So I write them into the DS to skip to their entry.  This is where the method shines.  After I get the pronunciation, I want to finish typing in the example sentence, I jump back to the first dictionary entry (which is still scrolled down to the original example sentence I was working on) by tapping the DS shoulder button and finish entering it into my SRS.  What generally happens is I end up having to look up between 1-3 new words during this process.  So after I finish with the first word, I then can start to go forward through each unknown word I looked up and repeat the process, using any of the example sentences it provides in that entry as my "answer" field.

Because the DS stores the entire chain of words that I have looked up, I can just work my way through each word creating SRS entries with example sentences as questions and as answers.  As I finish each word, I should theoretically understand it and all the example sentences that go with it, so then I never have to go back to that entry, so I can "move forward" through the chain of words I looked up, where the words I know completely are in the back of the chain and the words I don't yet know are in front.  I can keep doing this until I am sick of it, which is generally about 10-15 entries.  I am basically creating a self-contained set of entries where I understand and can read all the words.

Wow, that was longer and more boring than what I had in mind when I started typing.  The only problem is that you can't just skip to the unknown word in the dictionary entry by clicking on it (because the entry appears in the top screen, which is not a touch screen).  However, you can just write the characters below using the stylus, which gives writing practice anyway.  Also, the only other problem is that you can't get the example sentences without seeing English translations, but that is not really a problem for me because each time I see the sentence again in the SRS, the translation is not there and I still expect myself to understand it.

Ok, sorry for the boringness of that post.

New Kakitori Kun title! Seems to be a mix of the original Jouyou-covering KakitoriKun + 8000 KanKen questions :

『ＤＳ陰山メソッド      正しい漢字かきとりくん     今度は漢検対策だよ！』

http://100mas.jp/kakitori2/

The first Kakitori-kun game is great, but it only covers up to the end of elementary school (~1000 kanji, IIRC). It has a lot of material about those 1000 kanji, so it's well worth your time and money.

The second kakitori-kun game covers all ~1945 joyo kanji, so it'll likely have slightly less material per kanji, but it also covers *all* of the ones that most people care about, so ... *shrug* buy both? (*^_^*)

uh... the second one, I guess? Given that you've done (are doing) heisig, you probably don't need as much practice with drawing and whatever, so... probably you just want to get as many kanji practiced and out of the way as possible, right? If so... I'd go with the second.

Anyone else?