Now I’d like to write about my new Nintendo DSi, that I bought around the middle of June. It is metallic blue, and entirely in Japanese!
Why did I buy a Japanese Nintendo? Well, the Nintendo DSi is zone free (except part of the Internet functionality buying games online, because of different age limits for games in different countries). This mean that I can still buy European games back home and use them on my DSi. But buying the console itself here in Japan is a lot cheaper. Plus you have a lot more fun colours to choose from, like pink and lime green : P (none of them that fell to my liking). Also if I had waited about a month I could have gotten it in red! But to late to regret now.
The Japanese menus are reasonably easy to get by, and besides good for my Japanese education. And that’s also the main reason I bought my Nintendo, to learn some written Japanese. So fare I haven’t bought games at all, only two educational “games”, “Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten” and “Kageyama Method: Tadashii Kanji Kakitori-Kun – Kondo was Kanken Taidaku Dayo!”, phu! They do love long titles in Japan apparently.
Or actually, that’s not true anymore. In the middle of writing this post I found out that I wanted to by some actual games also. I remember learning a lot of my English true TV, Internet and games. Studying a language true books only are no good, and the best way to learn a language is basically to make it fun and use it as much as possible, which is the effect of making it fun.
I already watch some anime, so I will continuo to get the listening and eventually the speaking skills from there, plus from my Japanese101 lessons on my iPod. But the writing and reading part of Japanese is kind of a tuff obstacle that I just recently started worrying about, and games are probably a good way of tackling that. Buying the games here in Tokyo before I go home also makes it a lot cheaper than getting them shipped over afterwards. I bought most of them used, and it didn’t cost that much at all.
So, over to the games, starting with the “not game” category that I already briefly mentioned. Kanji Sonomama is a dictionary with the possibility of writing down any kanji, and getting the English explanation, using the Nintendo touchpad (no coincidence that the Japanese was the first to introduce that to gaming). Knowing the correct stroke order of the kanji will help the program finding the correct kanji, but you can make it in about half of the tries if you have no idea of kanji stroke order (like me. Need to learn some more basic kanji before the dictionary starts working properly for me I suspect). The English explanations are also a little limited, with a lot of Japanese in between, since it originally is a program for Japanese English learners. Menus are all in Japanese of course, like all the other games I bought, but I get by pretty well.
All in all it is a reasonably good dictionary, and a lot more reasonable than buying an actual electronic dictionary, that everyone carries around here. I will have to do that also in time, but for now, this will do. It was quite fun sitting on the train home, writing down the random kanji’s on commercial boards and train destinations and actually getting approximate the meaning of everything around me. Like a whole new secret world revealing itself. Having lived in Japan for almost a year now, I have gotten more than enough experience with being illiterate, and it is not recomended.
The next “game” Kakitori-Kun is designed for Japanese school kids, from first grade and up. It is a kanji-practising tool that introduces all the first 1945 kanji that Japanese school kids have to learn. In left screen it gives you the kanji, with example writing showing the stroke order if you ask it to. In the left screen you get to write it yourself, over and over and over again, until you are satisfied. You can ask for a subtle lineout of the kanji to follow, and you get your kanji graded with suggestions of what to improve on and everything. There is also a dictionary explanation of the kanji with example uses (only in Japanese of course). Quite a genius tool for anyone learning kanji. I am still on the level of a Japanese first grade school kid…
Then I went and bought a bunch of other actual games, or at least close. In Japan they use the Nintendo for a lot more than just traditional games. There are interactive cooking books, with voiced reading of recipes, voice control of turning pages, videos and pictures of how to prepare food, and automatic shopping lists. There are a bunch of school tools to learn you language, math or other subjects. There are also bunches of more obscure software, that will learn you more questionable things like face training of expressions and face muscles, or how to be a lady and other etiquettes, or how to do well in business by learning you stuff like what the correct way of choosing a seat in a car full of senpai’s and so one.
There are games to learn you sound reason O_0 You have fashion games and dating simulators. Also there are lots of interactive novels where you just read a normal novel on your Nintendo, or intervene in the story by choosing the fait of the characters, or solving the mystery, and so one.
A lot of these games are untranslatable into the English marked as you can understand, so the only way to get a hold of them is to learn Japanese, another good motivation to keep on studying.
I ended up buying a variety of games. First of all I had to buy the dating games for girls, a genre that virtually don’t exist in the English game market. After some Internet searching I ended up with buying “Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side 2nd Season” and “Otometeki Koi Kakumei: Love Revo DS!!” after recommendations from this page.
Both of the games should be possible to play without knowing too much Japanese, but I haven’t tried them out yet. Anyway, they look like great fun. The point of the games is to date various guys and try to get your self a boyfriend. 
You have a big harem to pick from and many different types, like the popular one, the sporty one and the guitar playing one and so one. Some guys are more difficult to get and it is important to work on your self to be attractive. Some guys would like you to be smart and study hard in school, but most of them would like you to use most of your time working out and shopping clothes to be attractive…
In Love Revo DS!! you even start out as overweight at 100 kg, and you have to loose weight to get to date the guys. They even have different weight limits like 75 or 65 or 55 kg. It is put in a humorous way, but even so I am sure this game will never be released in Europe or America : P
Following the genre I also bought a life simulator in book form where you follow the life of a girl and make all the big choices for her concerning boyfriends, drugs, children, sickness and so one. It is called “Akai ito destiny DS” and it will probably take me forever to get good enough Japanese to play it but it was cheep and a cool souvenir, so I bought it anyway.
Then I bought some children’s games that I actually could have gotten in English if I wanted but choose to buy in Japanese. The point was to have some easy games to start out with, with hopefully easy Japanese for me to learn. I bought Animal crossing or “Doubutsu no mori” as it is called in Japanese, and the legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass in Japanese.
Doubutsu no mori is a wonderful and simple children’s game that I have had tonnes of fun with so fare. To actually understand everything I have to play it in front of a dictionary, but most of the time I just played on the subway on the way to and from school, understanding a sentence now and then.
You play as an inhabitant of a small village consisting of animal neighbours. It is in real time, so if it is dark outside it is dark in the game, and if there is summer it is summer in the game and there are summer festivals for example. Sometimes the animals got mad at me, for reasons I didn’t know and some times I missed out on important events like fireworks and so one because I didn’t understand the post board completely, but most of the time I do ok.
It was fun to discover the small cultural differences in the Japanese version. Examples are using the way you talk as an indicator of which sex you are in the beginning of the character creation part. The Japanese language is full of these differences between sexes and it was quite a smart way to decide the sex.
Another difference was the staring models. There were no blond or red haired, blue or green-eyed models like the English version, only different shades of black and brown and of course two girls with pink hair. Also all the girls wore dresses, while in the English version I read that you could get pants and t-shirts and such!
Zelda I haven’t tried jet, but I bought it since it has a cool function where the pronunciation of kanji appear if you point at the kanji you don’t understand in the text. In Doubutsu no mori I play using only hiragana, which is possible to set in the menu.
In the end I also bought two cheep extra games for fun. One Go or Igo playing game called “1500DS Spirits Vol. 10: Igo” (see this post for more information about Go) and one crazy Japanese male cheerleader/rhythm game called as much as “Moero! Nekketsu Rythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2″.
The Go game was one of the best on the market I think. Studying artificial intelligence I know they have problems making a smart Go player, but lately they have made progress so this game would be able to beat me I was assured. The rhythm game was just a fun game that anyone can play. It was full of J-pop and crazy cartoons, and was a great souvenir.
Other stuff you can do with you Nintendo DSi are taking pictures and playing with them, or doing the same with sound. You also get a few free downloadable games from Internet, including a genius note pad/film making tool that provides loads of fun, and also a small purikura game that I can take back to Norway and use when I get Japan abstinences : P
Ok, long post that hopefully some of you found useful or interesting. Next post is gone be about my adventures in Japan again, and it is coming soon, promise : )
