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: 1

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: 4

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