If you have a Japanese 3DS, you may have heard of the 漢字の館とお化け達 (Kanji no yakata to obake-tachi: shougakusei) series. Or if you are considering investing in a Japanese 3DS, this is a game you can buy for it to help in your Japanese language studies. 漢字の館とお化け達 is a Kanji learning game series for Elementary school students. Each game gives you writing practice for the kanji that Elementary school students learn for each grade level, for example, the first grade game has all the kanji that first graders learn. If you play the entire series, first grade through six grade, it is possible to learn or rather practice 1006 kanji. The series focuses on writing kanji, recognizing kanji and kana reading skills. 漢字の館とお化け達 is broken down into three gates or types of kanji drills: 書き書きお化け, かくれんぼお化け and 書き取りお化け.
The first gate, 書き書きお化け, introduces 5 kanji by displaying each kanji on a big ghost (or obake), giving you one or two of the readings for the character in a small green box on the top left 3DS screen in kana. On the bottom 3DS screen, you have to write the kanji. There are options to end your study session, change your writing speed (the options are fast, normal and slow) or to erase the last thing you wrote on the bottom screen. After the game recognizes what you wrote in the bottom 3DS screen, whether you finished or not, the character the game recognizes your writing as will appear in a small box on the top 3DS screen below the ghost (オバケ).
The second gate, かくれんぼお化け, has multiple picture frames of various sizes on the top 3DS screen, which a kanji will move behind, so only parts of the character will be displayed through the frames. Again in the bottom 3DS screen, your goal is to draw the kanji based off the parts of it you can recognize on the top screen.
The third gate, 書き取りお化け, is a timed activity unlike the other two gates. A small オバケ slowly blows out a row of candles as you attempt to read a group of hiragana on the top 3DS screen and write the accompanying kanji for it on the bottom 3DS screen. This activity has the potential to give you a lot of points or rather, kanji written if you have a wide vocabulary and can remember and write the kanji for hiragana words quickly.
After you finish each quick activity, one of the gate activities, your written kanji will be added to a list of (whatever grade level you are playing) kanji for the game that will list how many times you have written each kanji. After you write a certain amount of kanji so many times, pieces of a hidden puzzle on the top 3DS screen disappear and your rank for the game goes up. The rank starts out low at E and rises until rank S, where the all the panels are uncovered in the puzzle panel.
Learning Japanese for Life 