Comments

My Love of Video Games Turned into a Love of Japanese — 10 Comments

  1. Nice work everyone! Very interesting stuff. Some very different study methods and reasons :)
    Thanks for taking the time to make these, I’m sure everyone will find some use from them.

    “But since these stories were getting long I decided to split them up, and allow for an open-ended continuation”

    no comment…. *runs off into the distance*

  2. This was a great, motivational read. As someone around level 35, and an avid gamer, I could really relate to parts of these stories. I’ve been beating myself up on not fully understanding a lot of grammar lately so I’m glad I sat down and read all of this.

    Playing import games was a big motivator for me as well. I’ve already beaten Sen no Kiseki 1 & 2, Tales of Zestiria, and Xenoblade X with no English release dates even announced for them yet.

    • That’s awesome. I’ve got Sen no Kiseki 1 & 2 for the Vita ready to go, and very much looking forward to starting them. I still have to finish up Neptunia Re;Birth 1, though. Not to mention my PS3 and soon to be PS4 backlog… (Sora no Kiseki SC is in there somewhere, too!)

      I really need more hours in the day for this stuff XD

      • I’ve got a huge backlog of games now too haha. I’ve only played SnK 1 & 2 but it’s such an amazing series. I didn’t even know they were all connected. I’m waiting for them to finish the evolution remakes before I play the rest.

    • Damn, did you shell out for a japanese wii u? I couldn’t make the plunge personally but I want to, unfortunately already own a pal console. Can’t justify a second purchase, especially after I already paid for my Japanese 3DS. Nintendo need to be more like Sony/microsoft in that regard.

      • I did but it was my first Wii U so it wasn’t anything extra. I got it for the normal price off amazon too.

  3. Man, we have the same video game related story haha. Grew up with Japanese rpgs and that got me interested in Japan and Japanese. Tales of Vesperia PS3 is the special game I’m holding onto until I know I can fully enjoy it. One of my favorite games ever, and it was the last one before Namco Bandai decided to gut the awesome costume missions and make them DLC. Hopefully I’ll enjoy the same success!

    • That’s awesome! 仲間が増えて嬉しい (^^)

      You’ve got a challenging road ahead, but stick with it and you’ll be playing games in Japanese like it’s no big deal before you know it =)

      For gaming specifically, I strongly recommend that the first game you play in Japanese be one of your favorites that you’ve played in English. This way you won’t have to deal with the frustration of getting stuck because you already know the game well, and can focus on just soaking up as much gaming vocabulary as possible. A lot of the core vocab carries over from one RPG to another, so that first game will help give you a critical foundation for the basics (moving around & controls, battle commands, equipment & settings menus, etc).

      Once you’ve got one or two re-plays under your belt, you can take that foundation of experience and dive into the great unknown of a new game. Since you’ll mostly already know the menu vocab and such, you can focus more on understanding the game’s instructions and overall story.

      Good luck!

      • Thanks! I took your advice and bought FF7 off the Japanese PSN. Maybe a bit too difficult but I figure I can learn something from it.

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