Daisoujou's Study Log - The Life of Dai

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
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Ok Muramasa’s got hands. Went through loads of dense lecture here on history where I learned about some real things (the dog shogun everyone hated!) but then found out it’s mixing in a bunch of fake history to trick me cause I wouldn’t know! This whole VN is pretty dense and tiring the way it’s written, have to admit now after a little more time spent with it it’s feeling very much like the old days when I was worse at reading and went super slowly with lots of lookups. Most of what’s tough in this screenshot is just names but it knows some real obscure words and kanji too, trust me. I think I’m sticking with it? Gotta brace for this taking forever though, progress is SLOW…

Basically I chose “the hard VN” and would you believe it’s kind of hard???

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Today I just wanna share a little image I came across; I get a bunch of people talking about visual novels on my twitter. This one caught my eye because it’s one of the scariest strings of Japanese I’ve ever seen in my life:

Otherwise same stuff as usual. On a very off topic note I made the mistake of getting into pinball recently; the Attack from Mars machine happens to be at a place not too far from me and it’s so fun. Definitely not conducive to JP learning.

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Smh, this is when you go looking for the Japanese pinball fan community and find niche forums

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It’s been a while. A couple big life updates that aren’t really about Japanese:

I mentioned at the end of a club for the people there who saw that I had a scan coming up to check on something a dental scan coincidentally found in my sinuses – something that COULD have been a serious issue all the way up to cancer but did have other, more likely possibilities. Still hard for me not to feel a little anxiety, heh.

I’m just reading the raw report right now and consulting with my friend who is a doctor haha, but it’s nothing too serious! Sounds like I’ve got some sinus issues like a cyst and some blockage that’s preventing my sinuses from properly draining but none of it sounds too severe since I’m not having bad symptoms from it and it’s explicitly nothing serious like cancer. So that’s a big relief.

I’ve also been rearranging my apartment because I’m making bad financial decisions and buying a pinball machine :sweat_smile: . I am truly, very hooked. The funny thing is from what @VikingSchism joked about, I’ve not had too much luck with Japanese pinball stuff because the game is so niche there (but they DO have an enormous arcade that looks awesome in Osaka). That said, the Godzilla machine, while being a really fun one anyway, has optional Japanese voice over so I turn that on and get to understand the callouts from it lol. ジャックポット！

The one I’m buying though is the 007 machine; it’s basically too hard for me right now but I’m in love. Pretty cool theme, the old movies are entertaining, and the gameplay is just great, very deep ruleset on it. Super hard shots though.

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All this aside, I’m continuing to play JP games here and there, just rolling forward as usual. There’ll come a time when I get serious about disciplining myself to practice speaking for real but right now I’ve got health related stuff I’ve focused more on, a little more working out cause my shoulders and arms are getting weak, etc. Can’t do TOO many things all at once.

I am seriously considering Dragon Quest Club but on top of not really being familiar with the games themselves cause I’ve only played 11 (which can be worked around, whatever), the real problem might be that it sounds like many of them are pretty nonlinear? That’s not true at all of 11 but I was reading that often they can be sort of open ended, just gated by your ability to handle what you find, and that might make playing together hard. Maybe I need to consult with people who know the series better.

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Glad your health scare was just a scare. I can imagine it’s hard to do much of anything with something like that hanging over you.

I recently watched a bunch of Technology Connections videos about pinball. I still don’t know anything about actually playing it, but I gained an appreciation for how delicate and specialized the machines are. I don’t think I could ever own one though… the thought of having to move it is terrifying to me.

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Ooh I need to watch this! I’m really impressed with all the machines do. The old ones are impressive for the time and the depth the new machines achieve out of a ball bouncing around is pretty amazing. For some reason the pinball machine that got me into the hobby slipped through as a game on Backloggd so I wrote a little review trying to explain some of the appeal. Such an addictive, heavily skill based game.

Moving it is going to be a struggle for sure. I’m buying new since the place selling it will deliver and do the setup. Even setup can be really touchy to get it just right, the machine has to be so perfectly level at just the right angle and all kinds of stuff. I’m expecting to get familiar with basic repairs sooner rather than later…

I’ll just wait on moving it til we’re moving out of here and everything is a pain, haha. With a proper dolly I’m sure it’s manageable… though I also can hire the people I’m buying from to move it it sounds like, if I really don’t want to at the time, heh.

I just have to really hope the mechanical sound doesn’t carry through apartment walls too badly. I’ll just play it during the day and really hope that it’s good enough heh. At least I’m on the ground floor.

Also I’m trying to figure out DQ club – asking on reddit at least for how non-linear they are but I’m mostly getting people not really answering my context about how reasonable keeping people together for a club is or isn’t for most games and moreso getting long form “well this one in act 2 lets you do things in any order but this other one is mostly only nonlinear in that you can skip things,” just giant play by plays haha. It does sound… not simple! We’ll see…

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I keep falling out from joining/keeping with the Final Fantasy club. But I plan to join in for FFVI, as I’ve played that game many times in English, partially in Japanese, and like the game very much.

Anyone who’s played FFVI knows the game is fairly linear up through the first half, but there’s a three-way split where you choose the order you do three separate storylines.

The second half of the game doesn’t take too long to become fairly open world.

I’m wondering how the club will handle these.

If it were me, I’d have a poll on the three-way split to see which order to go.

For the second half, I’d put on my dictator hat and dictate the order that everyone follows.

But what if I were running a club for a game with open world segments that I’ve never played before?

I’d probably pick a walkthrough and make that the gameplay route.

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So, you might have seen this this already but the developer has just spoken about how they do the bans, why they do, and how they might start a second site for overseas viewer, though with a fee. Here’s a link