What are some good games to practice your kanji reading?

[JackNoir413]

Real true otaku gamers will all have to face the wall that is untranslated media at some point. For me that was devil summoner 1(and the supercub novels). This year i managed to start getting some kanji practice on and after two months im close to 700 vocabulary learned and wanted to start a game to help me adjust to the grammar. I started ningyou hime recently and while the rpg words beat me up i can understand most of everything else so far.

But it got me wondering what do you guys think are some good games to start practicing kanji reading?
Also kanji learning thread if anyone wants to talk about that too.

 

[thanonyx thanonyx]

Greco’s Hall of Kanji　Learn Japanese< Beginner >​

 

[JackNoir413]

Greco’s Hall of Kanji　Learn Japanese< Beginner >​

View attachment 125606

i was thinking more on the lines of "non learning games where the vocabulary isnt too complex and any reading mistakes wont ruin your run on the long term"

still tho learning games count i suppose i just forgot all about them lole

 

[Otosou]

Start with games with furigana (the small text above kanji that tells how to read it) for instance Level-5 games (Youkai Watch, Inazuma Eleven...). The furigana is an excellent helper, because you learn all kinds of readings with it (like names, those are tricky in Japanese). If you are also an auditive person, get games that have lots of spoken lines. The moment furigana feels like clutter, it's the time to shift to furigana-less games. Keep on it and you will be victorious one day! Ganbatte!

 

[JackNoir413]

Start with games with furigana (the small text above kanji that tells how to read it) for instance Level-5 games (Youkai Watch, Inazuma Eleven...). The furigana is an excellent helper, because you learn all kinds of readings with it (like names, those are tricky in Japanese). If you are also an auditive person, get games that have lots of spoken lines. The moment furigana feels like clutter, it's the time to shift to furigana-less games. Keep on it and you will be victorious one day! Ganbatte!

i get what you mean, i considered reading manga with furigana like pandora hearts. i still keep that idea in mind but for me games are a lot easier to engage.
sadly inazuma doesnt appeal to me. i also thought about VNs or VN-ish games because its true spoken lines help a lot.

 

[qw90700]

I actually wrote about it because someone else asked pretty much the same question:

Good games to practice Japanese reading comprehension with

I've been thinking since I've been learning Japanese on and off over the years that I should probably practice more. I've poked at random games but I feel like I get frustrated when I encounter words I don't recognize and it happens fairly often. (I'm at that kind of awkward point where I can...

retrogametalk.com

On the other page of the very same thread I also wrote tips to learn Kanjis better.

 

[Juip]

Play tokimeki games, all the dialogue is voiced and a lot of lines will be repeated over and over again, it will burn the kanji into your brain

 

[qw90700]

Play tokimeki games, all the dialogue is voiced and a lot of lines will be repeated over and over again, it will burn the kanji into your brain

Yes tricking your brain into thinking you are in a sexual relationship with someone by playing dating sims can power up your language learning skills so hard you'll start writing Japanese poems in no time!!! lolol

 

[Sweetmint]

Yes tricking your brain into thinking you are in a sexual relationship with someone by playing dating sims can power up your language learning skills so hard you'll start writing Japanese poems in no time!!! lolol

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 9:25 PM

Real true otaku gamers will all have to face the wall that is untranslated media at some point. For me that was devil summoner 1(and the supercub novels). This year i managed to start getting some kanji practice on and after two months im close to 700 vocabulary learned and wanted to start a game to help me adjust to the grammar. I started ningyou hime recently and while the rpg words beat me up i can understand most of everything else so far.

But it got me wondering what do you guys think are some good games to start practicing kanji reading?
Also kanji learning thread if anyone wants to talk about that too.

View attachment 125594

Taiko no Tatsujin​

 

[JackNoir413]

Yes tricking your brain into thinking you are in a sexual relationship with someone by playing dating sims can power up your language learning skills so hard you'll start writing Japanese poems in no time!!! lolol

i could see the logic behind this.
"i must learn japanese and stay diligent to understand my dear nagisa-chan's dialogue!"

 

[qw90700]

i could see the logic behind this.
"i must learn japanese and stay diligent to understand my dear nagisa-chan's dialogue!"

But seriously best way to learn is actually using the knowledge, not just reading kanji. I will skip whole neurology 101 here, the simple logic is unless the knowledge you use used because you wanted to do something about it only then the memory gets stronger and your brain "cares" what you know so you don't forget it. That's why the best way to learn a language is by talking to people (I kinda mean chatting via text message in your context though). Then you will mirror them to learn how they talk and to apply your knowledge to predict how the sentence will go and what they will be about (this is like basics of how babies learn languages). And then another thing is learned memory being linked with other previously learned memories with multiple information you learn at the same time. That's why conversation is a better way to learn a language compared to looking at a list of kanji or something. For example when you learn the word for "white" you will focus on what letters the word is formed with. But if you had learned the word "white" by experiencing some emotionally impactful moment you would focus on how the word make you feel and what it makes you remember and what the word is about that strengthens your memory for the word. This is needed for you to think in that language. As long as what you learn has an emotional personal reason you will learn it better.

The key here is thinking in Japanese, not trying to translate words and shit. You don't translate your native language. When you were a baby you didn't understand what people were saying. You understood what makes people say what and how they sound like. By observing you learned what they were probably trying to mean. In the end most native speakers actually really don't know what words mean unless it is the name of stuff, but they just use words only in a specific context and for particular purposes that have a merit of "right way to use words". You gotta apply the same logic in learning kanji too. Good thing Japanese is so simple often entire sentences are standard sentences and that's why you only use particular kanjis in them that other kanjis may fit and make sense but it won't be natural. And that's why when someone trying to say something to you in Japanese it is hard to say things differently in Japanese because otherwise it won't sound natural. Otherwise you can always go full on philosophising that the listener will get but it will sound weird or "cool phoetic" lol.

So when you practice kanjis you gotta focus on practising standard sentence types a person may say. Thus your brain starts to see after seeing a kanji what other kanjis or words you will see next. This also makes you gain the ability to predict entire sentences by just reading a few first kanjis because there is no other way the sentence may end. At decent level you stop looking at kanjis individually, you just figure what the kanji is and it can make you forget how kanjis look like in detail which gotta write kanjis from time to time to not get rusty. That's why Japanese games having tons of shit dialogue is a good reminder for your reading ability lol.

However manga and anime are not a good way to learn Japanese because it is like learning English by listening Americano rap songs. This is not how natives talk in daily life lol. Manga and anime using a form of Japanese only for emotional impact for fiction to sound dramatic or cool because how real life people talk doesn't sound emotional or cool that can be interesting enough for fiction, and then since manga cannot fit longer sentences they had to come up with shorter way to say stuff. And then some video games also suffer from abnormal Japanese usage lol.

For example in real life we don't say "絶対、負けねぇ！" we say "頑張ります" or "負けるわけにはいきません" or "全力を尽くします". And instead of saying "ぐっ... 右腕が熱い... まさか、俺の力が目覚めたっていうのか!!!" we say "手がちょっと痺れてて、念のため医者に見てもらう" lolol.