Japanese with Video Games (part 1)

Recently, I mentioned using non-traditional study methods for my Japanese studies. While it may be a no-brainer to many people to do things in the foreign language they are studying or rather look to material, that native speakers of the foreign language use, for foreign language study material, it is still a fairly new concept for me. Lately, I have decided to use my love of video games as study material for Japanese, since I really like Japanese video games. In this post, I am going to discuss using Japanese video games as listening and reading practice.

How do you make video games into listening practice? One obvious idea is to play a video game in a foreign language that has voice actors and listen to what the characters in the game say. Although not everything will be vocalized, when you do hear audio, it will a good opportunity to test your listening skills at native speed or your ability to keep up with the speech as the subtitles (if offered in the game) flash by. (Of course, playing a video game in a foreign language usually requires buying said game or game system or both! depending on whether or not the game/game system is region locked. I will discuss some of the ways you can get Japanese video games in the third part of this ‘Japanese with Video Games’ posts.) Many games, especially home game systems have narrator or character audio. You can watch Japanese tv commercials for video games online or videos that Japanese game companies create to discuss their latest games and systems.

Playing video games in another language is mostly reading practice rather than listening practice. There are a lot of games that do not have audio, which makes for good reading practice. Games marketed towards children have furigana above kanji or may be written completely in kana! While video games are not books, they can have a surprisingly large amount of text. I like playing RPGs, which usually have long storylines and subquests. Some RPGs (role-playing games) allow you to do things not possible in other types of games such as sub-plots, which can help you build your vocabulary beyond the usual parameters of the game. Playing games in Japanese will expose you to a lot of vocabulary that you may not be exposed to in Japanese classes and can be a good supplement to using textbooks or studying kanji. While I was studying for the JLPT N3, I played Youkai Watch 2 Honke, which exposed me to not only vocabulary and kanji from the JLPT N3, but also from N2 and N1! Seeing the kanji and vocabulary in use in the video game helped solidify them in my memory more than just studying them from a textbook.

Have you used video games as listening or reading practice? What kind of games do you play and how was it effective?

 

Japanese 3DS: 電波人間 (The ‘DENPA’ Men)

I first discovered 電波人間 on the Japanese Nintendo eShop. I watched a video and saw one of the DENPA men talking and thought, ‘This will be good listening practice!’

Actually, the game uses some kind of text to speech program and the audio is a little hard to understand, because it’s a computerized voice. So, it’s easier to just read the text than understand the quickly spoken and hard to understand voice of the main character, which is the only person in the game that has audio for his voice. (The new 電波人間のRPG FREE has audio for all of your Denpa ningen!)

I bought 電波人間 1 and 2 last year when 電波人間 3 had just came out in Japan, and they were promoting the series with a sale. Since then, 電波人間のRPG FREE has also come out.

What is 電波人間? 電波人間 are creatures that look like people that you can find anywhere there are radio waves. The literal translation is something like electric radio (wave) humans. Of course you need and 3DS and one of the 電波人間 games to see and catch them. Each of the games in the series has it’s own storyline. But in each game you have to assemble a team of 電波人間, which have different attributes depending on their color, equipped clothing, and antenna or lack of an antenna. Sometimes in the games, you solve other people’s problems and each game has various dungeons that you can explore, fight your way through and discover treasure.

Recently, I have been playing the free 電波人間 game. It has a lot of updates and you can decorate the island and houses your characters live in. There’s also a lot of event dungeons, sales and event 電波人間 that you can get.

Japanese 3DS

A Japanese 3DS is not that much different from the US version of the 3DS. I admit, when I first bought mine, it took a while to set up. Things that were easy to read for me in English, I did not understand in Japanese. But with my American 3DS and my Midori (Japanese-English dictionary app on iPhone) in hand, I managed to do it after what was probably a few hours. I also managed to learn a lot of technical vocabulary as well.

One thing that I noticed about my new Japanese 3DS was that games on it were very expensive. It shouldn’t have surprised me, because I had seen prices of video games at electronic stores and Book OFF. But compared to video game prices, games in Japan can be about $20 more expensive. A lot of new games cost around $50 or $60, whereas on the US 3DS, games are around $40 or $30. Physical games and downloadable games can be around the same price. Some games are only available through download and a lot of games on Japanese 3DS do not make it to America or take about a year to be released for American 3DS systems. Some games are relatively cheap for download too, less than $10.

Having a Japanese 3DS is great for studying Japanese. Not only can you buy Japanese games and play them in Japanese, which is great for reading practice and broadening your vocabulary, but you can watch videos on it as well. About every week, Nintendo comes out with Nintendo Direct videos and other Nintendo videos, which you can watch either on the 3DS or on their YouTube channel. I was also able to sign up for a NicoNico (ニコニコ動画) account through my 3DS and start watching videos in Japanese on it. Also, when you view games on the Nintendo eShop, many of the games have tv commercials or other videos that introduce the game that you can watch.

There is also a lot of free applications and games you can download and use on the 3DS. Although they have many in-app purchases available, there’s still a lot you can do for free.

JLR: Japanese Kanji and Kana

I thought it was about time to invest in Kanji. So, I got a big Kanji reference guidebook to kanji and kana. It’s called Japanese Kanji and Kana: A Complete Guide to the Japanese Writing System. I got this book mostly for the 2,136 Joyo kanji it covers, but I was pleasantly surprised by all the other stuff in it.

Features:

• 2,136 Joyo kanji.
• Kana. (amazing katakana guide that goes over non-traditional sounds/writing like “ti” etc.)
• In-dept Introduction. (explanations about orthography, punctuation and stuff I don’t usually see in other programs)
• Indexes. (By radicals, stroke count and readings)

Conclusion:

Although I like my dictionary apps with their 1st grade through sixth grade and JLPT kanji and my kanji apps, I’ve wanted a Joyo Kanji resource for a while. This book has a lot more information that I was expecting.

JLR: Minna no Nihongo

This is one of my favorite apps to use. Minna no Nihongo is an iPod/iPhone application that is basically a textbook in an app.

What I like:

• Flashcards. Most of these have audio and some have kanji. They’re primarily written in kana with English translations. Some flashcards only have kanji and some of those have comments with show the reading in hiragana.
• 50 Lessons. I don’t have a physical copy of the Minna no Nihongo textbook, so I can’t compare the app with the physical textbook series. But that’s a lot of lessons.
• Really inexpensive. I don’t remember what I paid for this app, but I’m sure it was cheaper than the current price ($5.99), which isn’t very expensive.
• Dialogues. The dialogue tab has so many features/ways you can interact with the dialogue. There’s a picture with each dialogue, English translation, audio, text (which you can make disappear depending on which role/person speaking you want to listen to, manual mode to listen to each sentence at your leisure and my favorite: a video of the conversation.
• Grammar lessons. These are pretty brief, so it’s best to have another grammar source to use alongside this app for better explanations.
• Covers some things that I didn’t see in the Genki textbook, such as some vocabulary. Or maybe the way/order it teaches grammar and vocabulary is different.

What I dislike:

• I wish there were kanji for all the vocabulary words that kanji exists for. 
• Some English mistakes, I noticed “postcard” was spelled “poat card” and some other things. Overall, the English is really good. The application maker seems to primarily make apps in Chinese.
• A learning tool for kanji would be cool.

Conclusion:

I really like this app. It’s more of a review for what I learned with the Genki textbook series for me. I think the dialogue features are what makes it the best…and the low price. It covers what my college considers elementary and intermediate Japanese, so two years of college Japanese (minus the reading and writing practice).

Resources:

Minna no Nihongo by iLoveStudy

JLR: Japanese the Manga Way

One of the books I bought at the bookstore (Barnes and Noble) was Japanese the Manga Way or マンガで学ぶ日本語文法. It’s a grammar book decorated with manga strips to help explain new grammar.

What I like:

• Manga to illustrate how grammar is used.
• Explanations. There’s information about different types of speech male vs. female, and speech levels plain/polite etc.There’s information on sentence final particles.
• Romaji. I’m glad that there’s romaji, because this book doesn’t seem to use furigana above the kanji in neither the manga nor the transcripts in the text.
• Elementary and Intermediate grammar.
• Hiragana and Katakana charts.

What I dislike:

• Sometimes not all of the text or onomatopoeia is translated/explained in the book.
• It’s a lot of reading; so it’s best to divide the reading into small chunks.

Conclusion:

I like this book a lot. It has a lot of explanations that other books I’ve seen don’t have and the fact that it uses manga to help make learning grammar more fun and memorable is a plus.

Resource:

Japanese the Manga Way/ マンガで学ぶ日本語文法

JLR: Kanji Wordsearch App

A while ago, I received a comment about an  iPod/iPhone app called Kanji Wordsearch, so I tried out the free version of the app.

What I liked:

• You can do the hiragana word search using Kanji as the prompts
• Or you can do the  kanji word search using hiragana as prompts
• The app really tests you on your ability to read/recognize/match kanji and hiragana, because it only gives you one prompt at a time instead of a word bank where you can choose whichever words you can immediately find.
• There’s a time limit. This can be frustrating, but it does motivate you to find the answers quicker…or show that you don’t actually know the material as well as you think you do.
• Definition hints after your first attempt to highlight the answer to the prompt is wrong. This is really helpful, when you can guess/remember the characters based of the definition of the prompt.
• You can reset the rating of each word/compound. So if you make a mistake or there is a glitch in the app, you can easily change the rating of how well you know the word.

What I disliked:

• The app description states that there are flashcards for the kanji, so I expected flashcards that you could digitally flip. The flashcards are actually all on one page with example compounds that you will find on the  word searches.
• Random words picked for each word search. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to go through the flashcards for all of the possible words/compounds before beginning the word search if you do not know some of the terms. There’s not a feature that introduces or teaches new words/compounds to you, you just have to look at the list for the level, study them on your own and/or do the word searches repeatedly.
• The word search is not like normal word searches where items can only be connected in straight lines, sometimes you have to connect items on the word search by using angles. This sort of threw me when I tried the app out; I guess that’s why there’s a 5 x 5 grid option.

Conclusion:

At first this app was a little frustrating for me, because I was not used to doing word searches using Japanese characters and the fact that not all of the answers were in straight lines on the 4 x 4 grid version. After using  the app more, the word searches were easier for me to complete. This app is a good way to test how well you know to read kanji.

JLR: Japanese for All Occasions

Yesterday, I rediscovered a book I bought a while ago to improve my Japanese called Japanese for All Occasions: Mastering Speech Styles from Casual to Honorific by Taeko Kamiya. It’s published by Kodansha International, which makes a bunch of Japanese culture and learning books. I haven’t really used the book, but I skimmed through it and decided I’ll make it a part of my study plan for the next three months.

What I like about this book:

• No romaji! This book is not for beginners. You need to at least know kana and some Elementary Japanese (vocabulary and grammar) to really benefit from this book. So, it’s for Intermediate learners.
• Conversations/Dialogues. This is the majority of the book (19 dialogue lessons, 57 dialogues) with pictures, explanations of new phrases, English translations and grammar notes.
• Charts. Although some programs give you organized charts for reference, most of the ones that I’ve seen are not as nice as the ones in this book. There are vocabulary charts, conjugation charts (for verbs, adjectives) that are more complete than any other charts I’ve seen in other books. The verb conjugation charts include all (I think) of the conjugations covered in both Genki I & II textbooks.
• Audio CD. This covers all of the dialogues in the book and the example sentences in the first section of the book, none of  the charts though.
• There’s Furigana! If you don’t know what furigana is, I’ll explain. It’s small kana characters that appear above kanji to help you know how to read the kanji they accompany. Most of the kanji have furigana, but it doesn’t hurt to know some kanji before picking up this book.

What I dislike:

• While I was skimming the first section of the book, I did not see any mention of using じゃあ instead of で（は）. Actually, this contraction is explained later on in one of the notes in the dialogue section, but I think it should have been put in the beginning of the book with the conjugation charts. 
• I did find a small English translation mistake in the front of the book, where the word “after” was typed instead of “every” . But from what I’ve seen so far that was just a typo and most of the book’s English is correct.
• Sometimes the print seems a bit small (furigana, charts and in the appendices).

Conclusion:

This seems like a great book and if you want to work on your 警護（けいご）formal language and other speech styles and levels, this is a good book to purchase.

Resources:

http://www.kodansha-intl.com

JLR: Dr. Moku

Dr. Moku is a smartphone (Android and iPhone) and Desktop application for learning how to read kana through picture associations. You can try the app for free and if you like it, you can get the paid (full) version. The Android application is cheaper than the iPhone application.

Resources:

http://drmoku.com/

JLR: iStart Japanese

If you are new to learning Japanese, then iStart Japanese may be for you. It is an iPod/iPhone application that teaches basic Japanese.

What I like:

• 51 lessons
• Culture lessons/information
• Learn 250 Japanese words
• Learn hiragana and katakana
• Flashcards
• Quizzes
• App dictionary English>Japanese/Japanese>English
• You can get it on sale for half off throughout the year.

What I dislike:

• Slow pace
• Only teaches Beginner/Elementary Japanese
• Kind of dry, but pretty thorough (but not as thorough as Genki I textbook)

Conclusion:

It’s a good application for beginners.

Resources:

App Store

http://www.miraijapanese.com