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: 5

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

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, nihongo journal. Comments: 1

Somehow, a few months back, I stumbled upon Kanji Clinic, a website featuring the writings of Mary Sisk Noguchi. She writes a piece for The Japan Times six times a year. All of her past essays for the paper are on her site. I started at #1 and am reading several a week. I’ll be sad when I catch up and then have to wait two months for the next installment. 

I’m up to #39 which I read yesterday. It included the following which I will share with you so you can get a taste:

“Back in 1930, Shojiro Ishibashi (石橋, Stone-Bridge) dubbed his new tire company “Bridgestone,” now also internationally known for its bicycles. Just think, if plugging English keywords into the names of Japanese companies had become a trend, millions of drivers the world over might be cruising around not in “Toyotas,” and “Mitsubishis,” but in “Richfields” (豊田, Toyota), and “Triple Diamonds”(三菱, Mitsubishi).”

Whether you are learning Kanji or just interested in them, there is much of interest in her fun little columns.

Posted on October 10th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, Japanese Language Study Methods, japanese links. Comments: 1