{"id":1443,"date":"2008-12-16T12:51:01","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T19:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=1443"},"modified":"2008-12-16T12:51:01","modified_gmt":"2008-12-16T19:51:01","slug":"kanken-2-for-nintendo-ds-%e6%bc%a2%e6%a4%9cds2%e5%b8%b8%e7%94%a8%e6%bc%a2%e5%ad%97%e8%be%9e%e5%85%b8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/kanken-2-for-nintendo-ds-%e6%bc%a2%e6%a4%9cds2%e5%b8%b8%e7%94%a8%e6%bc%a2%e5%ad%97%e8%be%9e%e5%85%b8\/","title":{"rendered":"Kanken 2 for Nintendo DS (\u6f22\u691cDS2+\u5e38\u7528\u6f22\u5b57\u8f9e\u5178)"},"content":{"rendered":"

My fourth DS game for learning Japanese arrived in the mail yesterday. Kanken DS 2 + Joyo Kanji Jiten<\/em> (\u6f22\u691cDS2+\u5e38\u7528\u6f22\u5b57\u8f9e\u5178) is the name of it. The thing that excited me the most about this DS title was the dictionary (jiten<\/em> or \u8f9e\u5178). After messing around with it for an hour I have to say that the thing I am most disappointed with is the dictionary. However, everything else is much better than expected. I think this may even end up being a more useful tool than my previous favorite, Nazotte Oboeru Otona no Kanji Renshuu Kanzenhan<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a brief look at some of the features with some screenshots I took.<\/p>\n

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The above screen is a practice test at level 9. There are 10 levels in Kanken 2<\/em> corresponding to the 10 levels of the Japanese Kanji Aptitude Test (Nihon Kanji N\u014dryoku Kentei Shiken<\/em>, \u65e5\u672c\u6f22\u5b57\u80fd\u529b\u691c\u5b9a\u8a66\u9a13). Level 10 is the easiest level and level 1 is the most difficult.<\/p>\n

The format looks fairly similar to the quizzes in Tadashii Kanji Kakitorikun Kanken Taisaku<\/a><\/em>. However, Kanken 2<\/em> is far superior in my opinion. With the above on the top screen, the user writes \u3089\u3044\u3057\u3085\u3046, one hiragana<\/em> character at a time, on the lower screen. After touching OK the next screen appears.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now the user writes \u306b\u3061\u3088\u3046\u3073 (\u65e5\u66dc\u65e5) and so on. The quizzes are more interesting than those found in Tadashii Kanji<\/em>… or Nazotte<\/em>… as the content varies and is not the same format over and over again like those games. For instance, after filling in the hiragana<\/em> for several kanji<\/em> marked in red a different task is required as follows.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now the user has to write the number of the stroke highlighted in red. What happens if you make a mistake?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In this case I wrote 10 instead of the correct answer of 9. One thing I really like about Kanken 2<\/em> is that instead of just taking me to the next task I am given the option of going to the dictionary for this character. If I click on the orange box I go to the dictionary.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The dictionary is usually three pages wide. Above I am showing you photographs of two of those three pages. As you can see the dictionary doesn’t offer much more than the Nazotte…<\/em> dictionary. The dictionary has stroke order, on<\/em> and kun<\/em> readings, number of strokes, and radicals. That’s it. Nazotte<\/em>… doesn’t have radicals, but it has all of the other items.<\/p>\n

If a Kanken 3 ever comes out I hope Rocket Company (the software publisher) adds three things to the dictionary: example jukugo<\/em>, a brief definition in Japanese, and two or three meanings in English. This would be very useful for both Japanese and gaijin<\/em> users of the program.<\/p>\n

Other than the addition of radicals, there are two other things about the dictionary that make it superior to those found in Tadashii Kanji<\/em>… and Nazotte<\/em>… The first I mentioned above in that you can leap to the dictionary whenever you miss something. The other is that you can look kanji<\/em> up by sound. For instance, you can write kei<\/em> (\u3051\u3044) and be taken to a screen with every kanji<\/em> that has a kei<\/em> reading. You can also click on any of the kei kanji<\/em> to be taken to the dictionary screens for that particular kanji<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In summary, (although if there is interest I’ll post more screenshots and discussion of this title on this blog in the future) the games and quizzes in Kanken 2<\/em> appear to be much more enjoyable and varied than those in previously mentioned DS games teaching kanji<\/em> that I’ve experienced. The character recognition is better than My Japanese Coach<\/a> but not as good as Nazotte<\/em>… However, Kanken 2<\/em> doesn’t give the false positives that Nazotte<\/em>… sometimes does. Another complaint of Kanken 2 is the size of the characters on the screen. Nazotte<\/em>… is much easier on the eyes. Still, my prediction is that I will be using Kanken 2<\/em> much more than Nazotte<\/em>… in the future simply because it is more entertaining while accomplishing the same goal of kanji<\/em> mastery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My fourth DS game for learning Japanese arrived in the mail yesterday. Kanken DS 2 + Joyo Kanji Jiten (\u6f22\u691cDS2+\u5e38\u7528\u6f22\u5b57\u8f9e\u5178) is the name of it. The thing that excited me the most about this DS title was the dictionary (jiten or \u8f9e\u5178). After messing around with it for an hour I have to say that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[89,27,170,9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1443"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1453,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443\/revisions\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}