These will be my final thoughts, for a while anyway, on My Japanese Coach, the new game for the Nintendo DS.

The lessons (pictured to the left) in My Japanese Coach sort of jump all over the place and aren’t nearly as methodical as lessons you’ll find in a Japanese textbook like Genki. If another company chooses to create a game that teaches Japanese on the DS, a more structured approach should be considered. Perhaps the first 40 lessons should focus on what is needed to pass the JLPT 4 exam. The next 40 could focus on JLPT 3 and so on. In this way a person could theoretically be prepared to sit for JLPT 1 by going through the whole game of 1,000 lessons. If nothing else, it will keep the programmer focused on keeping things simple early on (which isn’t always the case with My Japanese Coach).

The lessons in Japanese are a mixed bag. Some are OK. Others are poorly written, unclear, lack examples to illustrate a concept, or flat out wrong in places. I almost wish I could have been commissioned to write the lessons. Japanese need not be as confusing as the lessons can make things appear.

Many words are brought forward in non-dictionary form without explanation. This will prove very confusing to new learners of Japanese. For instance “drunk” is presented as yopparatta instead of yopparau for “to get drunk.” “Rude” is said to be shitsureina instead of shitsurei. It is true that a na particle will frequently show up after shitsurei, but that isn’t always the case.

Sometimes kanji are presented before they are learned in the program. Grammar is sometimes taught incorrectly. For instance, hoshii can only be used for oneself. I think My Japanese Coach may hint at that fact, but then in the examples it is used incorrectly. Other people are also sometimes used in examples without a suffix like san or kun, and that isn’t correct either.

The grade levels are very misleading. For instance, in Lesson 48 of My Japanese Coach you enter the 4th Grade, yet you only have learned only 20 kanji. Japanese kids entering 4th Grade actually know over 400 kanji. Even though 20 characters have been introduced, kun and on readings have yet to be distinguished.

In summary, I hope the strong demand for this product will light a fire under DS game developers to create a game like My Japanese Coach without all of the flaws. The task shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish. Some of the existing games for Japanese people (like Tadashii Kanji Kakitorikun Kanken Taisaku or Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan) can be adapted with English translations. The only other thing that would need to be added is the lessons.

Another approach could be to just upgrade the Ubisoft product by having a native Japanese person work on the calligraphy, employ someone who teaches Japanese to re-write the lessons, improve the character recognition software, and replace some of the useless games with games that will improve a person’s Japanese language abilities (including kanji games like those in Tadashii… and Nazotte…). Add a kanji lookup dictionary like Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten and you will be talking about a fantastic product that Ubisoft can sell for over $50 instead of $30. I’d much rather pay $100 for such a product than $30 for My Japanese Coach. How long do you think I will have to wait for such a thing to come to fruition?

In the meantime, I’ll continue to go through the vocabulary in My Japanese Coach. My Japanese Coach is a worthy investment for a beginner (if it doesn’t build too many bad habits like incorrect stroke order and sloppy grammar) at only $30. Intermediate and Advance students of the Japanese language will want to stick with Japanese titles produced by Japanese companies to improve their Japanese at this point.

Posted on October 28th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, my japanese coach. Comments: 2

I tried taking some pictures of screens to show you some screenshots that aren’t from Ubisoft, but they all came out blurry. Sorry. I’m now on Lesson 31, and the bugs or other problems with My Japanese Coach continue to surface.

There are occasional typos or unclear portions of the lessons. For instance, when discussing Japanese particles the coach says (or rather writes), “The first one I want to cover is と(to), as in ‘go to the store.’ The particle for that in Japanese is に(ni).”

A first time learner will likely be confused between the particles と and に with this explanation. What the coach should have said, had someone proofread the game before finalizing it, is, “The first one I want to cover deals with ‘to,’ as in ‘go to the store.’ The particle for the word to (as in direction) in Japanese is に(ni).”

Another problem is the one-word definitions with no examples. For instance, imi suru was one of my vocabulary words in a recent lesson. The definition given? Mean. That’s it. Mean. In English the word mean has more than a half dozen meanings. Does imi suru mean average, method, unkind, indicate, consequence, excellent, or one of mean’s other meanings? There is no way to tell with just My Japanese Coach. Should they ever do another version, they need to fix this. They should, at least, include an example sentence. They could also include an example sentence using the new vocabulary word in the correct context in the Bridge Builder game (pictured here).

The verb bases discussion is going to go over any beginner’s head the way it is introduced and taught. While the charts with the five bases plus te and ta bases may be correct, a beginner has no idea why they are being taught them or of what use they are.

The map of Japan the user travels through is rather strange. When you hit Lesson 30 you go south from Tokyo to end up in Hokkaido. If you want to go back to Tokyo you go up (north) from Hokkaido to get to Tokyo. That seems a bit different than the Japan I once lived in. 

One last shortcoming I’d like to point out for today is the ordering of the vocabulary introduced. I have read elsewhere that once you hit Lesson 100 you get 10 new, random vocabulary words for each lesson. The arbitrariness of the new vocabulary words taught doesn’t seem to wait until Lesson 100 though. In Lesson 26 there are words like kagayaku, hakaisuru, and unazuku. These words are pretty advanced for Lesson 26, considering most JLPT Level 4 words (the most basic and most used 700+ words in Japanese) have yet to be covered.

Posted on October 25th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, my japanese coach. Comments: None

My Japanese Coach for the Nintendo DS is selling really well on amazon.com. It is ranked #1 in its category ahead of titles like Spore Creature, Cooking Mama, and Nintendogs. It’s in the top 10 for all DS games. I hope this shows other game developers that there is demand out there for a product that teaches Japanese to those who speak English. After playing the game for a few hours now, I’m hoping a Japanese company produces a similar title without all of the mistakes.

And what are the problems? As mentioned previously, intermediate students of the language are going to have to play the game for hours, maybe even days or weeks, before they learn something new. There is a way to skip to Lesson 30, but the developer has yet to reveal that cheat code. Hiragana yo and na, as well as katakana ka, ne, no, hi, and wa, show an incorrect stroke order. The characters are sometimes drawn poorly. Katakana i, for instance, shows the middle line way over to the right when it should be right down the center of the screen. The character recognition is not nearly as good as in some other kanji learning games like Nazotte….

Something else that would be nice to have in this game is a kanji lookup dictionary like that found in Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan or Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten.

Based on the popularity of this title I hope Ubisoft will employ a native Japanese person to improve a second version of My Japanese Coach. If they don’t, maybe some other company will take up the charge to create a bug-free Japanese learning game that will be of use to both beginners and more experienced Japanese learners. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Until then, My Japanese Coach is still good for beginners who don’t mind learning a few things incorrectly but is frustrating to those past the beginner level who will get more out of Nazotte… and other titles aimed at Japanese people.

Posted on October 24th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, Japanese Language Study Methods, my japanese coach, Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu. Comments: 2

Within an hour of receiving My Japanese Coach for the Nintendo DS in the mail, my 12-year old son came home. Needless to say, that was the end of my experiments with the game until today when he went to school, allowing me to finally get a crack at it again. Apparently he found My Japanese Coach quite addictive and learned a few dozen words last night and this morning before school.

I went into the audio section of the program (pictured to the left) and played around a bit. Although the game doesn’t correct your pronunciation, it does offer you a native female speaker saying a word. You can then record your pronunciation of the same word and play them both back simultaneously. This is actually more helpful than it sounds, and the quality of the recording is quite good.

While the speaker is native, I have a feeling that much of the character (both kanji and kana) drawing in the program is not done by a native Japanese person. This is unfortunate. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog entry, some of the stroke order is wrong. If you, as the learner, write it correctly you will be marked wrong. You have to write the character wrong to get it right. Ugh.

If you go under Options/Credits you can see all the names of the people who created the game. They are nearly all non-Japanese names except for the voice actor. All of the beta testers have non-Japanese names. Again, this is unfortunate. Ubisoft should have hired some more native Japanese speakers and character writers to create and test this product so that it is 100% accurate and bug free. People purchasing this game want to learn how to write like the Japanese, not like gaijin.

Finally, for today, I played around with the dictionary. There is both an ei-wa (English-Japanese) and wa-ei (Japanese-English) dictionary. The wa-ei comes in both romaji and kana versions. While the dictionary is quick and handy, it isn’t huge at about 10,000 words (compared to a good electronic dictionary with more than 20 times as many words). Also, it includes only a one or two word definition without any example sentences so its usefulness is limited.

Posted on October 23rd, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, my japanese coach. Comments: None

The first DS game aimed at English speakers learning Japanese has finally hit the market. My copy of My Japanese Coach arrived from Amazon in the mail today. After playing with it for 20 minutes I have some good things and some bad things to say. I’ll give you more complete reviews in the coming weeks.

The first thing I was happy with is the placement test. I thought, “Great! Now I don’t have to go through dozens of levels before learning anything I don’t already know.” Unfortunately, even if you score perfect on the placement test with tons of time left on the clock you will only skip the first 10 levels.

I also can’t change to kanji/kana until I get through 20 more levels. I can change the difficulty level for games, but they are still too easy if you know much Japanese.

The next problem is a bigger one. I noticed the stroke order as taught in My Japanese Coach is incorrect for some characters. Those include the hiragana yo and the katakana ka. I hope those are the only two, but I’m guessing there will be more. (After all, I’ve only played the game for a less than a half hour.)

The games look fun, varied, and comprehensive so I don’t think anyone that wants to learn Japanese will get bored quickly. I’m excited to delve further into all the features, and will share them with you, but I wish the creators at Ubisoft would have made things more friendly to intermediate and advanced users. More importantly, I hope there aren’t many Japanese errors being taught (like incorrect stroke order).

Posted on October 22nd, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, Japanese Language Study Methods, my japanese coach. Comments: None

I’ve finished reading a couple more magazines that need a new home. If you want them, or the earlier items mentioned, let me know.

Nihongo Journal, August 1993 features articles and pictures on selecting a dictionary, J-league soccer, preparing for the JLPT, and much more. Clocking in at over 120 pages, this magazine can keep you busy studying the Japanese language for a while. Most articles include English translations. All include furigana. Some are aimed at beginners. Others target those at upper beginner and intermediate levels.

Mangajin, No. 24 is no longer available from the publisher and is quite difficult to find. This is one of the better ones I’ve read (not that the others aren’t good). There is much about mizu shobai in this issue. The Crayon Shin-Chan and What’s Michael? manga in this issue are absolutely hilarious. Mangajin expanded to about 100 pages starting with about issue No. 20. Good stuff!

Posted on October 16th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, Japanese Language Study Methods, Japanese Manga, mangajin. Comments: 1