OCR for Games & AI for Speaking Practice

Japanese
#1

Hey everyone,

I’ve been looking into two tech tools for Japanese: OCR for games and AI for speaking practice.

OCR for Games
I’m playing Ni No Kuni and Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar in Japanese. Both games have furigana and log, so reading isn’t the main issue. I just need an OCR tool that lets me use something like 10ten on it. I’ve tried Yomi Ninja, which does exactly that, but it crashes or doesn’t work 90% of the time (I might get the latest version of Yomi Ninja and try it again). Anyone know a better OCR tool that works with 10ten or has a similar pop-up dictionary feature?

AI for Speaking Practice
I don’t have Japanese friends to practice with (nor do I have the time right now to find any). I tried ChatGPT and it’s not half bad, but is there anything better out there (without a subscription)?

Would love to hear your experiences and recommendations!

Thanks in advance! :shinto_shrine:

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#2

GameSentenceMiner should cover you pretty well. OCR works great, and if you want even better results at the cost of a little more of setup, you can add Textractor (I’m linking to a fork that supports way more games).

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#3

I did get GameSentenceMiner, but I believe there are some requirements to install before it can work, and it’s a bit time consuming. But if it’s really the best, I’ll go through the setup.

Also, what about a pop-up dictionary feature? I just now remembered Game Gengo mentioned an OCR in one of his videos, and it wasn’t GameSentenceMiner. Let me check what it was… Ok, the OCR is called Kamui OCR.

Has anyone here tried Kamui OCR? Would love to know how it compares.

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#4

The cost of Kamui and other OCR pretty much put a stop to me using any of these tools, so alternatives are my recommendation.

Games with features where you can review what was said, or push to advance the text rather than having it auto-advance are valuable, as well as games with furigana. Game Gengo (whom you mentioned) has a list of games and their features with some community added info as well.

I think building the skills to look up things will help for times when OCR isn’t available, but I wouldn’t consider this a strong argument against using it, especially early on when you’re just trying to get some immersion wins on the board for motivational purposes.

I still remember spending 3-5 minutes looking up a single Kanji when playing through my first game. A bitter pill, but I had to do it to progress.

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#5

When I started out, I couldn’t get any of the OCR to work consistently for me and I ended up brute-forcing video games without any tools to aid. It did end up working for me, because I now play quite a few games fully in Japanese, but YMMV and you may not want to suffer through that so unfortunately I don’t have much advice for that.

My concern and warning with AI for speaking practice, despite me generally thinking AI is great for language learning aid, is that I do not think that AI is a great tool (right now anyway) for speaking practice, because despite the fact that it will tell you that it can criticize your pronunciation/intonation, it can not. My suggestion for a getting speaking practice is actually to use VRChat on Steam ( it is free and you do not need a VR headset for this, just a mic) and depending on your level either going to a Japanese-English language exchange world (there are a few) or if you’re a bit more advanced, to go to a Japanese-language world and try chatting up people.

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#6

Yes, I do have Game Gengo’s tier list and it’s amazing work. Games with logs and furigana are my top priority.

What exactly do you mean by the cost? Pricing? Oh! Yeah, Kamui is $5 a month… I just saw that now. Did you use Yomi Ninja as well?

Yeah, but as you know, searching up a kanji on your phone with the help of furigana can bring up so many words with similar spellings, so OCR + 10ten really is convenient.

Yeah, we’ve all been there.

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#7

Yeah, we’re on the same page.

Since this one got recommended to me a few times already, I’m going to finally get it tonight. What keywords should I search to find servers/rooms?

#8

That’s what I mean by building skills vs. staying motivated. You’ll need to learn to disambiguate at some point.

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