My Japanese Coach - Nintendo DS

Hello, It seems that most who have written reviews here generally wrote them after completing only a handful of lessons. Since I'm currently up to lesson 70 after about two months of playing the game about 40 minutes a day, I think my observations may be helpful for those trying to figure out exactly how the program evolves as it introduces more complicated kanji and grammar. Let me give a bit of background about myself first so that you can better guage where I'm coming from. I'm already fairly conversant (though not fluent) in Korean from studying it during college and have previously studied Japanese on-and-off a bit here and there in the last year. Since Korean shares extremely similar grammar with Japanese, along with many Chinese loan words and concepts, learning Japanese has come fairly quickly to me. In fact, the biggest obstacle for me in learning Japanese has been the fact that my work schedule (50-60 hours per week for a large law firm) made it difficult for me to establish an effective, independent study routine. And that's where this game came to the rescue. To a subway commuter, this thing is an absolute godsend. While it is impractical to try and work through a textbook on a subway (at least here in NYC), this game allows me to pass my commute with a variety of different drills that really let me absorb and internalize the vocab. As people have said, this program is inadequate as a sole source of study material; however, it has certainly filled a very important niche for me. To expand on the above, here is a quick run down of pros and cons as I've observed them: Pros: -Vocabulary is generally presented in fairly sensible, interrelated chunks. -The combination of games that all stimulate your memory in different ways -- in particular, flash cards, write cards, hit-a-word, and yomi -- are all extremely useful in drilling the words into your head. I find that my active recall of many of these words is lacking; however, my passive recall is phenomenal. -The kanji, one of my personal weak points during previous attempts at learning Japanese, is also well-organized and presented at a reasonable pace. -The grammar sections are refreshingly well thought-out and the majority of the topics covered are supplemented by sufficient examples and lesson-specific games. -The dictionary function is very useful as well, though I wish it would let you practice writing any word you selected. Cons (this is surprisingly long, especially given my 5 star rating, I know; however, there are some annoying quirks to the game that may frustrate those who are not using it primarily to reinforce vocabulary): -The biggest drawback for me is that the game does not constantly test you on all the vocabulary you've learned, even if you try to play the game with only the "mastered" option selected; instead, the game will only test you on material from the previous 8-10 lessons or so. As you progress in the game, this means that the only way for you to review everything you've learned so far is to go back to each lesson individually -- a tedious process which involves paging through the lesson to the end and playing the two lesson-specific games. This limits your review in two very annoying ways: 1) you will be unable to continually train older vocab in all of the 12 different games; 2) you will only be able to train older vocab against other older vocab in the same lesson. The second point is probably the most disingenuous and counterproductive because it lets your brain "recall the lesson" rather than internalize the vocabulary itself. You may not know a word very well, but you can recognize quickly every time when you only have to select it repeatedly against the same nine other vocabulary words in the same two games. I've found this an obstacle to refreshing or re-memorizing the older vocabulary because it only teaches you to have a passive command of a word relative to others in the lesson. -Another big drawback is that the non-lesson-specific grammar games are atrocious at higher levels. Instead of drawing on the passages used in the lesson-specific grammar games, the general grammar games seem to pull 3 to 4 sentences from some other, seriously-lacking source. These other practice sentences (use mostly in bridge builder, spelltastic, fill in the blank, and scrolls) are rarely helpful. For example, I recently had a grammar game where three our of four of the questions revolved around fairly banal sentences using the word "ikura", despite the fact that neither the word "ikura" nor the grammar employed in the sentences was at all relevant to anything I had studied in the past 15-20 lessons. This limitation relegates you again to going back to each lesson and playing the lesson-specific games for review. -A smaller drawback that should be noted is that it does not teach you the competing Kanji pronunciations in terms of On and Kun; which, from what I understand, will make it more difficult to truly master the Kanji later. -Finally, as many have noted, the game is blotched with a few tiny programming errors here and there. This can be anything from a mis-conjugation in a lesson to even having a game freeze up (only happened once) when it seemingly drew a vocabulary word for which there was no information. Given the scope of the game, these things are relatively minor. Overall, the game has been a huge boon to my studying and I highly recommend it to those looking for a mildly entertaining way to drill vocabulary and reinforce grammar. I currently have a private Japanese lesson every weekend where I review the concepts and vocabulary introduced in the game (occasionally supplementing them with material from Japanese for Busy People) and have found that this game can provide a solid foundation for self-learning but only if you are willing to review the material with a native speaker to ensure you are understanding it correctly. Hope that was helpful. Good luck to all in their studies. Read more

Since I'm seriously considering studying in Japan for college either next fall or the year after that, I knew I needed to start somewhere. Picking up a good-sized book is all well and good, but taking some of them (often slightly oversized from what I've seen) everywhere is a little overwhelming at times. So, in addition to the book I purchased (Japanese the Manga Way, which I strongly suggest if you're serious about learning the language) I picked this up to take with me wherever I go so I can practice on my breaks at work, while I'm eating lunch, etc. So let's start with the basics. Starting up is a snap. It's self-explanatory and is one of the easiest things of the entire game. However, regarding file management, I found it difficult to figure out how to delete files. This was mostly due in part to how far ahead the placement test put me. The instruction manual doesn't tell you how to do this and it's not from the main menu, but rather in the options section of the menu once you actually get into your file. Speaking of the placement test, that's the next thing. If you know a little Japanese, that's all well and good, and even better if you feel that you just want to move on. But I personally feel it should give you the option for a placement test or not, because not only in the earlier lessons did I come to find that there were certain words I didn't know, I wanted to be able to practice writing them and speaking them. (on that note, the speaking and comparison feature is absolutely wonderful. Possibly one of the best features of the game, granted you have enough peace and quiet to do so) The lessons themselves are rather short, but even when you would take a foreign language class in high school, the reality is you would only cover a maximum of about 3 pages in a single day out of your textbook on average. That said, I recommend taking your time and don't rush yourself. You'll just find yourself ending up worse and possibly confused later on. Their point is well explained, however, and the games only help pound the terms into your head (for the most part and depending on the game played). Only being on lesson 8-9 so far, I don't have even half of the games unlocked, so I really can't comment on any of the later ones. However, just to mention the initial three, there's a word search, a whack-a-mole equivalent, and a multiple choice test. The word search is generally useless, listing the English word at the top and you have to search for the Japanese term in it's place. This might be effective, but you instead focus so intently on the words your looking for, chances are the intention of focusing on their meaning gets lost. The whack-a-mole game on easy and medium difficulties is pretty useless, but once you try hard, it's almost like playing fast-paced multiple choice. Watch what you're hitting! And the multiple choice test is just that, possibly the best of the first three games. The next two unlocked are as useful both as the multiple choice, if not moreso. Fading characters is the absolute most effective way to really practice learning how to write Japanese at a fast speed, though beginners should start with the in-lesson training. While it may be true that some of the brush stroke sequences are supposedly off (so far I've yet to really notice anything) if you're going to learn the language and use it in the future, either you'll figure it out on your own through a different source or possibly through a native speaker. Being, from what I've read elsewhere, only about 30 or so stroke sequences are off, which isn't a big number at all and is, in my opinion, not something to really worry about. The next game after that tests your memory of how to write words, a true test to how well you've learned and been paying attention. Hard, but possibly one of the most useful tools on the cartridge in getting you extremely familiar with the language. The best thing about all the games is you can set them to Open mode, which uses only words you haven't mastered yet, unless you've, say, only got 3 words left to master, in which case the other 7 words will be replaced with mastered words from any lesson; or you can set it to mastered, which will only give you words you mastered. Again, a great way to effectively test yourself in the later lessons. The dictionary is wonderfully helpful as well, but I'd personally prefer a book-version dictionary instead. It would probably be more helpful, beneficiary and you can actually compare and contrast with this game to see where it got romaji spelling wrong or where it got kana/kanji wrong. All in all, the game is a wonderful tool for learning, but it's just that. The unfortunate thing is that it really doesn't do too much to make it really all that interesting and fun, which is sad because it's a great tool for learning. It becomes boring after a short while, and I never find myself completing more than one lesson at a time. The best thing of all is that hopefully this will be the start of a new trend of games. Think about it, it could be potentially possible to take an entire college course (at the very least homework-wise) on a DS game, thanks largely in part to the touch screen. Bottom line: if you're serious about picking up Japanese, pick this up. It's more for starters, but even more intermediate learners may find something here or, if not, can keep up on their studies on the go and brush up on the basics. Practice makes perfect after all. Read more