Gaming in Japanese

Hey gang,

Here’s a new video I put together that covers some essential vocab if you want to start playing games in Japanese.

Obviously I couldn’t cover everything in one video, so let me know in the comments if there’s anything you consider to be essential for Japanese gaming.

(to anyone who also frequents the Wanikani forums, I shared the same post over there)

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Thanks for the cool vid and the share!

Just fyi, the video link you shared is time stamped and starts at 7:27 :slight_smile:

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Very topical uh…topic.

I’ve got a small handful of JRPGs that I want to play, but I have to look up a lot of grammar to do so. I know it’s going to be time consuming but I really want to dive in.

I might post questions to this forum when I encounter sentences I really can’t work out, so I hope that’s ok. Thanks for the video!

Playing games is definitely a great approach :slight_smile:

That’s how I learned English back in the days.

And when I tried playing some Japanese RPG it was difficult at first, but after absorbing all the basic vocab it was quite fun and a great experience to familiarize yourself with context where all of the words are used, since you encounter similar sentences all the time.

Maybe I should start playing games in Japanese again… :slight_smile:

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This year I made a resolution that I will only play games in Japanese (with a few exceptions Death Stranding :smiley: ). My Nintendo Switch is set to Japan region and its only in Japanese yay!

I even bought again Disgaea 5 Complete, just to have play it fully in Japanese. :slight_smile:

Initially its really hard (like others have said) but with JRPGs its OK as long as the player can control how fast (slow :smiley: ) the characters talk. Fire Emblem is also OK but I have only played 2/3 hours of it…

The great thing about games is that the same words will appear again and again.
Of course it will not be the same as playing the game in the player’s native language.

Tips that I learned over the last half year:

  • Remove as much friction from enjoying the game as possible / take breaks. It should be fun!
  • Complete the game first in one’s preferred language and then switch it to Japanese for a new play through.
  • Watch Japanese YouTube lets player play the first part or so of the game and then look up all the words which are new.

Wish Kantan Japan had more subscribers!

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Good advice, maybe I will try again. I made the mistake of trying out Curse of the Moon (8-bit retro)…plot dialogue is fantasy-gothic so even the English is a bit obscure trying to match a time period feel. Just reading kanji in 8-bit a is challenge too so I got frustrated and gave up.

@Kantan_Japan
Very cool video :slight_smile:

@emonk
Ask as much as you can, we will always try to help :+1:

@Kuromaku @zerohbeat @s1212z

If you play visual novels then texthooking is very useful.

If you play jRPGs then you can find kanjitomo useful, which OCR text in-game.

And when you just read books then macOS built-in dictionary is very useful.
Linux/Windows users can use goldendict instead. You simply select the text and press the shortcut button (alt, control or whatever you choose in options), and it will show record from installed dictionaries.

Or simply yomichan when in webbrowser.

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Thank you for introducing to me kanjitomo (just tried it)! That is really useful when reading light novels online and trying to find the meaning of a new word :smiley: .

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Hey! :grin:
If you are reading online using web browser, yomichan might be even better.

Cheers :grin:

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Wow, that was a quick reply. Currently for reading I use the bookwalker.jp in browser reader / app. Just tried to see if the Yomichan extension works there… unfortunately not ohh well.

However when reading web novels on ncode.syosetu.com, Yomichan makes a lot of sense!

Anyway, thanks for the idea! Hope you have a great day :smiley:

p.s Years ago, I did use Rikaichan( or something similar named extension which worked like Yomicham) to read NHK web easy articles :smiley:

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And here am I, one of those people bunpro makes fun of in the sentences :slight_smile:
A person who knows all the kanji (~2500) and vocab, but barely any grammar :slight_smile:

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You are missing 3500 Kanji for the Kanken 1 … way to go

In all honesty, you barely really need anything more than ~2500 (not counting names obviously).
Jouyou is around 2200, then there are a few more hundreds useful kanji.
But in the past year I haven’t encountered even a single kanji I didn’t know when reading manga, twitter and such. But vocab is obviously a whole another thing.

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