Start with easy, easy games. Ideally turned based, so you can go at your pace. Stuff like Pokemon should be easy to get started with, and other games aimed at kids that do not bombard you with difficult words or kanji.
You can look up every word if you want, since they start to repeat themselves a lot. It is up to you how much of it is a hassle and how much is fun.
I love video games in general, and a lot of Japanese ones in particular and…that’s actually why I’ve pretty much given up on trying to combine the two for now, for the most part.
Actually, I do play some in Japanese, but only those I really don’t care about because it slows me down so much and detracts from my enjoyment of the game itself at this stage of my ability. So for me it’s just some goofy casual stuff with minimal text. I do use Japanese language acting whenever possible though, as I find getting a variety of voices, speaking styles, and characterization to be helpful listening practice. But for the most part, the sorts of sci-fi/fantasy stuff I gravitate toward isn’t really conducive to learning useful/realistic/practical grammar and vocabulary anyway.
The exception is that when I have some real down time for “recreational” study, I’ll replay some old console RPGs emulated in Japanese with Wanderbar or just a dictionary to study by playing a game with a story that I already know and love. (And if anyone else has a similar interest, I highly recommend his YouTube videos where he plays through and talks about the localization along the way in a running commentary – fascinating stuff!)
But for those whose philosophy/preference in this area differs from mine, どうぶつの森 and similar character/social-focused sim-style games may be a good choice.
Amusingly I’m kind of the other way around: these days if I spend hours playing videogames I generally end up a bit depressed and feeling like I’m wasting my time instead of doing something more productive, but if I do it in Japanese it’s language practice so it’s fine.
It does certainly slow me down a lot though, but I do get a lot of practice out of it and it feels really cool to be playing these games in Japanese.
Hey, that’s great! I’m glad that works for you.
If I didn’t have other stuff to do that interfered so much and I could truly focus on learning through games I absolutely would. Just for me, I always end up down one rabbit hole or another, either in the game, with something Japanese, or both…and then I’m already out of time. Maybe in a few years I’ll be in a better position to do it though. Cheers!
English is my second language so my suggestion from this experience would be to not look up every word or grammar point you don’t understand. If you do this, your progress is gonna be so slow that you will probably just give up. After a little while you probably won’t even want to open the game up because it’s gonna be a chore.
The fastest way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it.
I would suggest you limit yourself on the amount of stuff you are looking up. Here are a few suggestions
- Give yourself a limit of lookups. For example; maximum one lookup per sentence (even less would be better).
- Wait 5min between each lookup.
- Look up words only after seeing them 3 times so that you look up only words that are used a lot.
- Watch an English playthrough at the same time. (One of the big pushes I got while learning English was watching a lot of tv with subtitles in my own language. It gave me immediate feedback on what was said and sped up my learning by a lot)
So, to recap, your immersion (through video games) should not be a slug. Your learning on wanikani and genki/bunpro will be slow so don’t make your immersion slow as well. At first, it might be demoralizing but if you keep going, in a few months you’re gonna realize all of a sudden that you’ve been understanding way more stuff. Like; “Hey, I haven’t used a dictionary for the past 15minutes and have understood 70% of the stuff”. Your progress will be steady but noticing and appreciating your progress will be sporadic.