Well, I’m a bit of a video game おたく. Well, maybe おたく is a bit strong for me; but I do like to play them when I’m bored (hate being bored). Anyway, I started playing 白騎士物語 (しろきしものがたり, aka White Knight Story [White Knight Chronicles in the US]), in English, but got impatient waiting for the second version to get translated, so I bought the 日本語 version. I made a post on one of the in-game chat boards asking if anyone could speak English and was willing to join me to help me with both quests and my 日本語 in exchange for helping them with their English. I got a response from someone one day, who, surprisingly isn’t even Japanese, but speaks Japanese quite well.

Anyway, long story short; they’ve been helping me to get items for making new gear for my character in the game. When I need a certain item for a piece of armor or a weapon or something, I’ll look up the Kanji on Jisho.org and usually am able to figure out what the item is based on the kanji; generally learning the kanji in the process through association, since I already know a lot of the game from the original version I played in English.

I’ve found that; being able to associate the kanji with something I already know is helping me to learn them a LOT faster. The hard part, though, is figuring out the correct pronunciation for the kanji. Also, it makes learning the kanji through Textfugu a bit odd as I’m learning some of them out of order; but for me it seems to work better to actually use the kanji. In my case, I type it in based on sound using hiragana then convert it to the kanji when telling my friend what the item is I need.

I’ve also been finding that a lot of Japanese games have the option to switch between English (英語 / えいご) and 日本語　(にほんご / Japanese). If you have a game like this; play through it once or twice in English; then, once you’re comfortable with the game and menus, switch it to Japanese. Alternatively, for more of a challenge; do the reverse and take your time to look things up. If you have trouble or get stuck, you can always switch it to English to get unstuck. It’s kind of a similar idea as to your original post, larisajane.

I’ve been so busy with work lately, though, that I really only get to play it on weekends (that and Japan is so far ahead of us in time that that’s the only time my friend can get on when I’m on is weekends).

Anyway, if you’re into video games, I recommend trying it out. But chances are, you’ll probably want to pick up a used copy of the game on ebay, as buying brand new copies of imported games can be VERY expensive.

• This reply was modified 13 years, 1 month ago by  Devin.
• This reply was modified 13 years, 1 month ago by  Devin.

Well, if you need someone for character design, let me know… that’s what I excelled at in my college career. Character as in player or non-player characters mind you. I suck at concept art though, so I’ll leave that to someone else.

Well, as some of you may know; I’ve been playing some Japanese games to help me learn the language a little better. And so far it’s helping; but I still don’t know enough to really carry on a conversation. So what I was wondering was… How do I say, “I’m not very good at Japanese yet”?

If you could give me a kanji version and a pronunciation version would be awesome. Thanks!

• This reply was modified 13 years, 4 months ago by  Devin.