Jarvik7 wrote:

Something to watch out for with the Sonomama jiten: It's not an instant-on dictionary, which will dissuade you from using it, and it's physically impossible to look stuff up while you're playing a (Japanese) game in your ds.

Well a Canon wordtank can't play Zelda now can it?
For what it's worth, Sonomama Jiten is absolute great. I found it pretty helpful with studying, though I admit, I'd rather have a Canon or Casio wordtank, but right now I can't afford it and Sonomama Jiten fills that position nicely till I get one of those wordtanks. Using my DS as an e-dictionary beats any looking up in an actual dictionary or turning on my computer to look up that one word.

Jarvik7 wrote:

The DS browser is a curiosity at best. It is very slow and properly renders almost no websites. I don't think it works with Anki unless you run it through a proxy. There are some ancient posts about this if you search.

Something to watch out for with the Sonomama jiten: It's not an instant-on dictionary, which will dissuade you from using it, and it's physically impossible to look stuff up while you're playing a (Japanese) game in your ds.

What about a DS with a cheap electronic dictionary at your side?

Musashi wrote:

kazelee wrote:

Jarvik7 wrote:

The DS browser is a curiosity at best. It is very slow and properly renders almost no websites. I don't think it works with Anki unless you run it through a proxy. There are some ancient posts about this if you search.

Something to watch out for with the Sonomama jiten: It's not an instant-on dictionary, which will dissuade you from using it, and it's physically impossible to look stuff up while you're playing a (Japanese) game in your ds.

What about a DS with a cheap electronic dictionary at your side?

Why would you use 2?

The DS to play the Japanese game and the electronic dictionary to look up words. Probably.

I have spent a lot of time finding every Japanese focused game there is for the DS. Included are the numbers that you can use to.. find.. them. If there are any missing please let me know. Maybe this list could be updated to the first post and have reviews progressively added.

Japanese language focus

0768_タッチで楽しむ百人一首 DS時雨殿
0773_クイズ! 日本語王
0834_日本語文章能力検定協会協力 正しい日本語DS
0947_学研DS 大人の学習 金田一先生の日本語レッスン
1267_旺文社 でる順 国語DS
1334_音声感情測定器ココロスキャン
1335_美しい日本語の書き方・話し方DS
1361_「うっかり」をなくそう!文章読みトレーニング 読みトレ
2100_問題な日本語
2319_日本語検定 DS
2714_ユーキャン ペン字トレーニングDS
2766_日本語で遊ぼう

Learn Japanese in English (these suck)

3317_My_Japanese_Coach
3543_Mind_Your_Language_Learn_Japanese

Dictionaries made for Japanese people

0096_DS楽引辞典
0405_漢字そのまま DS楽引辞典
1356_ビックリマン大事典

Kanji related

0501_みんなのDSゼミナール カンペキ漢字力
0579_財団_財団法人_漢検DS1
0584_□いアタマを○くする。DS 漢字の章
0666_財団_200万人の漢検 とことん漢字脳
0795_SIMPLE DSシリーズ Vol.10 THE どこでも漢字クイズ
0796_なぞっておぼえる 大人の漢字練習
0980_DS陰山メソッド 電脳反復 正しい漢字かきとりくん
1140_えんぴつで奥の細道DS
1281_必殺カンフー 漢字ドラゴン
1305_まる書いてドンドン覚える 驚異のつがわ式 漢字記憶術
1601_It's tehodoki 般若心経入門
1825_財団_250万人の漢検 新とことん漢字脳
1890_読めそうで読めない漢字DS
2001_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!
2146_DS美文字トレーニング
2570_難読漢字DS 〜難読・四字熟語・故事ことわざ〜
3271_最強の漢字ドリル5万問
3454_まる書いてドンドン覚える 驚異のつがわ式 漢字記憶術
3629_財団_漢検DS3 デラックス
3638_漢字の渡り鳥
3933_財団_漢検DS2 + 常用漢字辞典

Literature

1312_一度は読んでおきたい日本文学100選
1534_DS文学全集
1649_図書館DS 名作&推理&怪談&文学
1845_毎日新聞1000大ニュース

Last edited by thermal (2009 July 03, 12:24 am)

If you can use homebrews, there's http://www.zoelen.net/blog/NDS/ProjectJDS.asp which is quite simplistic but quite nice for random testing of the kana.

Is there any (good) game out there with kanji and readings like Zelda? The reading lookup feature from Zelda is really cool but the game itself is totally boring. I tried Pokemon and it is much more complex but as a kana only game it is really difficult to read and not that helpful for learning Japanese although it helped my ability to read katakana.

EDIT: Or are there games with complete scripts out there, so I can easily look up readings by myself?

Last edited by thorstenu (2009 June 28, 3:59 pm)

thx for the tip Zarxrax:)

It's fairly difficult, but I recommend 逆転裁判 (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney). You are a lawyer and you have to collect evidence and use it in court to help your client. You look through the witness's statement and find out where it doesn't quite match up with the evidence. Then expose them. They start sweating more and more and making up more BS as you continually show them to be lying.

I think it's good because you don't need to understand everything. With English we never try to understand just for the sake of it, there is some reason. So here you just need to try and find the lie even if you don't understand every word. Great practice and good fun.

What about 3782_スローンとマクヘールの謎の物語?

You are presented with a story and you need to figure out why something happened. You choose words from the story and can ask questions to try and pin down what it was.

Example

It was a sunny day, but a girl brought an umbrella to school.

You then can click on sunny day and choose, "all day" among other options and it will make a question "Was it forecast to be sunny all day?" And you get a Yes, No, or It doesn't matter answer.

It's really well put together. If you have a suspicion there will be a way to ask questions that confirm or deny that suspicion by piecing words together. It also has furigana for all the kanji.

It's been more then 2 years since this topic was created. Tens of new programs/updates have come out that haven't been compared on this thread.

Anyone want to give an overview of what's best out there now?

I went to Bic Camera today with the intention of picking up one of the kanji kentei games and was just overwhelmed by how many of them they were, from the same company at the same price.

I just want something that will keep track of my progress, re-quizs me on stuff I get wrong, doesn't use only insane Kanji I wll never actually use see, and Makes me write out the kanji for pratice.

Yeah, I've checked those pages out, Unfortunately they don't cover anything that's came out in the last year. It's disturbing seeing Kanji software from the excat same company sitting next to each other at the same price.

koyota wrote:

I just want something that will keep track of my progress, re-quizs me on stuff I get wrong, doesn't use only insane Kanji I wll never actually use see, and Makes me write out the kanji for pratice.

My recommendation here would be 財団法人日本漢字能力検定協会公認 漢検DS3デラックス　(aka Kanken DS3 Deluxe) by ロケットカンパニー.  I have some minor problems with the character recognition (I just don't seem to be able to get it to recognise 子 or 聞 first time) but other than that it is excellent.

Some of the screenshots for  財団法人日本漢字能力検定協会公式ソフト 250万人の漢検プレミアム 全級 全漢字 完全制覇 by アイイーインスティテュート look interesting but I haven't had a chance to try it out for myself.

wow, thank you for the Chrono Trigger script
Chrono Trigger is my favorite game ever, and I just got a DSi and decided to get the japanese version, since I've been through the entire game around 20 times . For my surprise when I got the game in hand I discovered there's english available too, so I played it in english, but now that I have finished RTK and will learn real japanese, I can't wait to play again, but in Japanese instead.