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 Off on My Japanese Coach dictionary and other features

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 Off on My Japanese Coach for the Nintendo DS

After more than 160 posts I figured I better mention sushi for the first time. The above photograph is from a sushi restaurant in Kyoto. I’m actually not a huge fan of seafood which means that I only like a few kinds of sushi. However, this restaurant served much more than sushi so I had shabu shabu or sukiyaki. I don’t remember which. Whichever it was, I do remember it was very good.

御馳走様でした！

Posted on October 20th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: food, japan pictures, kyoto. Comments Off on Kyoto Sushi

Daikoku at Kiyomizudera (清水寺) in Kyoto

Daikokuten is one of the Seven Lucky Gods. Frequently seen with Ebisu, at Kiyomizu he is solo. Daikokuten is best known as the god of wealth. The mallet in his hand is supposed to magically conjure up money. The rice bags he stands on symbolize wealth. He also has a bag of rice slung over his shoulder.

Posted on October 19th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japan pictures, kiyomizu-dera, kyoto, lucky gods. Comments Off on 大黒天

“When we reached Arashiyama, we walked towards the Togetsu Bridge…

One could see the Hozu River from the path. We were exactly by the dam north of the Togetsu Bridge. The Ranzan hills on the opposite bank were heavy with gloomy green, but at just that point a vivid white streak of foam stretched across the river and the air was full of the water’s roar.

We walked along the river until we reached the Kameyama Park at the end of the road. There was a good number of boats on the river…

At the gate we turned back and looked once more at the Hozu River and the green foliage of Arashiyama.” (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, p. 116-118)

I’m having a most fabulous time reading this book that features images I encountered just last year even though the book is set in the late 1940s.

If you click on the above image to make it larger you will be able to read a sign that says ボートのりば on the right which means something like “boat launch” or “boat boarding area.” You can also see a couple of different style empty boats on the opposite shore. I’ll show you some pictures of people in the boats that we encountered further up the river in a future blog entry.

Posted on October 18th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: arashiyama, japan pictures, kyoto, yukio mishima. Comments Off on Yukio Mishima on Arashiyama