Brilliant! Yes!
なるほど！
(That pic looks a lot like StarDew Valley)
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It’s Chrono Trigger, perhaps the best 2D RPG ever made.
Although, with as many RPG’s as there are these days, and with so many people having been raised on 3D games, I don’t know if most in today’s generation could appreciate a title like Chrono Trigger.
But in its time, the Super NES era, it combined a beautiful art style, wonderful music, colorful cast, epic story with great pacing, and almost no flaws. And it holds up very well. (I’d say it holds up perfectly, but I’m clearly biased.)
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Yep, you’ll get no argument here, Chrono Trigger is phenomenal. For my exact aesthetic tastes and propensity for weirdness I think I prefer Earthbound, but Chrono Trigger is still really as good as you describe. I think I’d like to replay it in Japanese sometime too, though I’d probably prefer to treat it as some casual reinforcement and make sure I’m at a place where I can understand enough to shrug off the words I don’t recognize. How’s reading the dialogue been going for you so far?
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I’d say it’s been hit and miss. A lot of words are ones that don’t come up in manga for me. (Maybe I need to read more manga set in the middle ages?)
I’ve mostly been just ignoring unknown words since I “know” what’s being said from having played the SNES at least a few times, and the DS version (separate translations) at least once.
However, the next time I play it should be easier for me to look up unknown words with the screenshot/Migaku process I put together.
I’m sure there will also be the inevitable “Oh, I should have known the hiragana word, but I didn’t recognize it without kanji.” After all, Chrono Trigger only uses about 500 unique kanji. Anything that would have a more complex kanji, instead is complete in kana.
It would be nice if the computer port (which was plagued by many issues due to a fairly lazy and misguided porting effort, most of which has been cleaned up across a set of five patches from the port team)…wait, what was I saying before I went off into a parenthetical? Oh, right, it’d be nice if the computer port had more text options. Like, include both the SNES and DS scripts for English release, but also have someone do an alternate Japanese script that just puts in kanji where it normally would be. (And maybe an option to not play the PlayStation release animated cutscenes, as for some of us they ruin the experience. I mean, aside from layering stuttery and causing the game for me on Linux if I don’t press a button to skip them in time.)
By the way, if you don’t have any WaniKani kanji leeches hounding you, you’d probably recognize about 78% of the unique kanji in Chrono Trigger, and 86% of the overall kanji used in the game. Note that this is based only on dialogue, and not on item descriptions. But it’s those kana-only words that will get you.
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I’m sure the particular set of words in use would be similarly troublesome for me. If I get around to resuming Dragon Quest when that feels less difficult (hmm, maybe it’s about time to just do a quick test and see if I can see improvement), I bet that would be a big help in overlapping vocab.
Trust me, I’ve heard plenty about the PC port, haha. Real shame.
I actually could read the image you added! Helps that Genki happened to teach えんりょ so I already know it without kanji (and uhh, only without kanji, at the moment).
Me currently playing Paper Mario with its almost complete absence of any kanji:
Anyway, good luck! Certainly a fun way to study no matter what. Such a great game.
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Once you finish that, you’ll be ready to graduate to pre-kanji SNES games =D
(I purposefully picked one where you might know all the words but one.)
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For me that image seemed fairly readable, but I’ve definitely experienced a bit of “oh what, it’s meant to be that?” when trying to read mostly kana words. Still, probably not the worst thing to get some practice with recognising words without their kanji
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I only noticed this line just now, but I think I can read that whole panel too! I assume you mean しんけん? It came up a few times on Satori Reader. And then I saw someone in the comments on Satori Reader talk about how that same word (well, Schinken) means ham in German, and what an improvement it is to replace every instance of its use in Japanese with ham. And, I mean, yeah, I’d be concerned too if someone was making a ham face at me.
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That’s the one, as it’s the least common word there. But it’s also one where I feel if the reader doesn’t know the word, even just the sentence it’s in alone kind of gives a sense of its meaning.
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It did. I didn’t recognize 真剣な (しんけんな serious/earnest) or あたん… I HATE reading kana-only. However I do admit that it IS how language is heard In Real Life (without the subtitles). Sigh Still so far to go!!!
Nb. Christopher, could you please add a mention of this game over on the “Video Games in Japanese” thread? 500 unique words sounds attainable for an early game to try…
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The thread looks to be Nintendo Switch oriented, and while Chrono Trigger was on the Virtual Contol for the Nintendo Wii, it’s not available on the Nintendo Switch.
500 unique kanji 
Plenty of other words in Chrono Trigger, all kana.
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2021 In Review
The year’s not quite over yet, but I’m looking over what I had planned out for 2021.
Reading
This worked very well for me. I did miss a day here and there, either because I was doing something else Japanese-related, or because I had family visiting.
The main issues with this plan were:
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If I want to read a manga that has 45-page chapters, and I only have 15 minutes available for reading, then I have to choose something else.
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I didn’t anticipate I’d be reading various manga with as few as 8, or even 4, pages per chapter. Makes it easy to game the system. “I can be lazy and not read during the next hour, then get a 4-page chapter in right before bedtime.”
For 2022, I’m planning to aim for time spent reading. I’m not yet certain how I want to go about tracking this, though. Migaku Reader does have a timeboxing option, but the icon when it’s enabled stands out too much and distracts me from reading.
Here’s how my 2021 reading went.
Planned or considered reading, and read (at least some of):
- アオハライド: I completed the last five volumes as planned.
- アリア: I only completed two volumes, plus an omnibus volume (which is two smaller volumes combined), so it’s more like four volumes completed. The main things that kept me from reading more were 1) needing to set aside enough time for a whole chapter, and 2) it being material I’ve read in the English release before and saw in the English-subtitled anime before.
- ポケットモンスター SPECIAL: I planned to complete five to ten volumes. In the end, I read through only three, although I’ll finish a fourth one before the year ends.
- 俺物語!!: I thought I’d finish this one off this year, but somehow I managed to not reach my one-chapter-per-week goal more often than I’d realized. But that’s fine because I really like the series, and being past material that was in the anime means it’s all-new material that I’d like to stretch out a bit. I completed nine volumes but will have completed a tenth by the year’s end.
- 美少女戦士セーラームーン: I completed the last two volumes (which are the size of about two to three standard volumes each) as well as the Luna story. In all, I’d say it weighs in at about six standard volumes worth.
- ふらいんぐうぃっち: Only two volumes here, but that’s because I’m caught up and waiting for new volumes to be released.
- おじさまと猫: Only three volumes completed here. Sometimes this series gives me word-packed pages, so I tend to be a bit hesitant to pick it for reading.
- それでも歩は寄せてくる: At the time I originally planned to read this, there were five volumes out. The volumes are short (less than half a typical volume), so it’s no wonder that I’ve completed eight volumes.
- からかい上手の高木さん: Reading with the book club, so three volumes completed.
- 現代魔女の就職事情: Even though I plan to finish this series, it’s not a huge attention-holder for me. I did complete three volumes.
- 耳をすませば: Completed this one-volume manga. Haven’t yet looked into the Baron spin-off.
- よつばと！: Just one volume released this year, so that’s all that was read.
Didn’t plan on, but picked up and started reading:
- あしたは土曜日: Finished both of the two volumes.
- 恋に恋するユカリちゃん: Completed three volumes.
- 恋文 －山本崇一朗短編集－: Just one volumes for this collection of unrelated stories.
- ご注文うさぎですか？: Finished up the one volume I had been paused on since 2019. Much easier with all the kanji I’d learned during the break.
- たんぽぽの綿毛: Planning to finish the second of two volumes before the year ends.
- ひとりぼっちの○○生活: Finished one volume, but want to know more kanji before I continue the series.
- マギ: I expect to finish up the third volume this month, for three volumes total this year.
- 好きな子がめがねを忘れた: Finished up the first three volumes.
- 幸色のワンルーム: Read the first two volumes.
- 藤代さん系。: Read one volume. The unrelated side stories for the last third or half of the volume slowed me down from reading more.
- わんわん探偵団: Finished off the last two books.
Planned or considered reading, but didn’t:
- orange: I haven’t started this one yet. Maybe something to get to after I finish 「俺物語!!」?
- ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん: I haven’t looked into this one yet.
- Detective Milky: Did I really not read a single volume of this in the whole year?
Other reading:
- 名探偵コナン 瞳の中の暗殺者: Read the first half of, but since I’ve seen the movie I felt like there wasn’t anything pulling me toward reaching the end.
- かがみの孤城: Reading with the book club for it, but won’t finish until sometime in 2022.
- Skyward Sword: Played through most of the game in Japanese. Just a little waiting for me to get back to.
- Pokémon Brilliant Diamond: Probably only about a quarter of the way through playing in Japanese.
Vocabulary
I lost my streak in iKnow, and thus as planned dropped it from my daily reviews. That’s fine as I’ve been leaning more into using Anki.
I aimed to create one Anki card per day from my manga-reading, but that didn’t happen. I didn’t have a workflow that would make it easy. However, Migaku Reader + Migaku Dictionary for Chrome get me very close to having an easy workflow for it. If they ever give me a tool to select part of the manga image to include on the card, that will be the last main thing that keeps me from making cards for manga vocabulary.
Not counting kanji cards, I did create 991 new Anki cards this year. And only 60 of them became leeches and got suspended by Anki (so far). Granted, a lot of these were words I already know, but I was weak on recognizing the kanji. Without those, it’s probably more like 100 to 200 new cards. But it’s important to improve my recognition of kanji and vocabulary I’ve already learned.
I’ll plan out 2022 a bit later in the month.
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Dang, Fritz, I’d say you’ve been knocking it out of the ballpark! Good work!!! Wow!
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Here’s hoping 2022 is a year of furthered progress =D
Although my number of manga volumes read has steadily gone up year after year, 2022 may be the year the yearly amount goes down. Progress in reading the novel 「かがみの孤城」 may very well lead to more novel reading in the next couple of years!
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Plans for 2022
I’m still shaping up what I’d like to do for the new year, but here’s how things are looking so far:
WaniKani
In December, I spent about 20 to 30 hours on reviews. Of those, 98% have been leeches.
I could have instead put WaniKani on vacation more, and used that time to watch another 50 episodes of Sailormoon.
I probably should switch to vacation mode? But I’m stubbornly not wanting to break my streak (currently at 1,099 days). Is it the gamer in me?
Maybe I’ll switch to doing a few reviews in the morning, a few in the afternoon, and a few at night, without spending so much time on them. I can prioritize cards that are at a later stage, and not worry about how big the backlog gets (for now).
Anki
I’ve been trying to lean more into using Anki to pre-learn kanji and vocabulary that will show up in what I’m reading. I can’t do this with manga, but with text material (books, anime subtitles, video games where a script is available and split into “chapters”) I’m able to.
Handling Anki Leeches
For kanji leeches, I plan to delete them. I could leave them suspended, but if I’m reading something that uses a kaji that is suspended as a leech, I want it to show up for reviews again. I don’t know how Migaku’s kanji add-on handles a request to create a kanji card for a suspended card, but deleting suspended cards will ensure that they get re-created when I expect to see them again.
For vocabulary leeches, I’m letting them suspend and leaving them. I’m not very certain how I want to go about them. I’ve had a few cases where I created a vocabulary card, only for Anki to reveal that I have an older suspended card for the same word. It’d be nice if there was a way I could know at creation time if a target word appeared on a card already, and to be able to reset it if it’s suspended as a leech.
Reading
I want to pick one thing to read that I do intensive reading on. There is a lot of grammar that I see often that I sort of have a feel for (maybe), but I should really read up on to better understand.
Alongside that, Migaku's dictionary extension will also make it easy to look up unknown words and to create Anki cards (including kanji cards) as I go.
I’m currently undecided on what series I’ll use for this purpose.
I’ll continue reading all series I’m currently reading, and may add in various new series for extensive reading as well. This is my usual reading method, where I don’t worry too much if I don’t fully understand parts of what I’m reading, so long as I get the gist of it. And I typically only look up unknown words if I think I can’t infer their meaning from context, and if I can’t understand what’s happening without knowing them.
Watching
I originally planned on going the Netflix-over-VPN route, but that’s too volatile, so at the moment I’m sticking with shows I have on DVD that I’ve found Japanese subtitles for. I started that earlier this year, but it’s been on hiatus as I’ve been mostly using my watching time for reading 「かがみの孤城」. I probably won’t get back to watching subtitled anime until after finishing the book.
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Oh damn, where did ya get Pokémon Special in Japanese? The scans got taken down so I was looking for a legit place to get it
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Looks like some good plans, best of luck! Speaking of the Netflix over VPN thing… my understanding is that it’s sort of VPN specific if Netflix stops you, right? It’s something I’ve been kinda idly considering doing. Right now I’m just using the English version to watch a few low hanging fruit things like Midnight Diner. The VPN I use is a little more obscure (I know loads of people are jumping on Nord so that gets easily blocked, but it’s always felt to me like using a popular VPN is a little… contradictory), and I want to think that it would work well here, but I guess it’s hard to know.
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I buy from Kobo because I have a way to remove the DRM so I can read it on my Linux computer, but there are a lot of options out there.
Here are a few, in no particular order.
This is correct. And since I use VPN rarely, I calculated that with my (not counting potential Netflix use) usage, it would be most economical to go with the oft-advertised “buy two years of VPN to get the best price”. For my usage, at least a year in now, I have no regrets about that financial decision. But it also means that if Netflix starts blocking the VPN service I use (if they don’t already), I’d be unlikely to change VPN vendors.
I just now did a search for the VPN provider I use + “Netflix” and found a few articles from this past September that basically all said, “Here’s a workaround to not being able to access Netflix with this VPN provider. The solution is…switch to Nord!”
I do wish content creators would make it easier for me to give them money. Although, when you consider that anime adaptations seem to commonly be targetted at selling manga and light novels, and I can buy manga and light novels digitally without issues, maybe I’m in an okay place right now.
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Yay 2022 plans!
How are you dealing with all of the new additions because you have to dig through all of them before even reaching level stuff?
Still riding the vacation wave. I had also written this on @Rowena’s page a few months ago now, but the time commitment was starting to get to me so I took a step back. And stepping back reaffirmed that yes, I do want to keep Japanese in my life, but how. Thank goodness I have a lifetime membership because my new plan is a possible reset- not right now and not all the way back to level one- because I realized that I am/was having a hard time recognizing kanji/vocab outside of WK. Like my recall is garbage (by my standards), which is a little deflating. And as much as I want to be reading, dealing with grammar just isn’t a hurdle that I can get over on my own.
Which is to say that I’m now taking virtual lessons at a local Japanese school, and once I reach the end of the textbook (in June I hope), I’ll see what kind of shape I’m in. I don’t know that I’ll stop my lessons though- I want to push past my limits and start getting into the trickier sentence constructions- but maybe then I can start chipping away at kanji in an active way again.
So I guess that I’m doing what you are, but without all of the tech, just to get a better foundation going to support the kanji retention.
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Do you mean the new vocabulary for lower levels? Those ones I’ve gotten through fairly quickly and easily.
As for current level items, when I reached level 31, I worked my way through all available kanji and vocabulary lessons, but I haven’t done any radical lessons yet. That means I’ve done a very small amount of level 31 lessons so far. I’m on day 98 at this level.
Recently, I stopped doing Apprentice reviews. I’m letting them pile up, and I’m just doing all not-Apprentice reviews. Guru 1 on up. Today was 61 reviews done, with 79 Apprentice just hanging out on the sidelines.
My current hope is to see a gap form. Guru items will either drop to Apprentice or move on up the ladder. Eventually, I should make my way to zero Guru.
I’m saving so much money by having lifetime that it almost feels like 
's depositing money into my checking account.
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