Playing video games in Japanese is possible but not fun

Japanese Language Reading
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I enter the words into Anki and do a ton of reading/playing along with studying. I don’t enter every single word into Anki. I try to mine entire sentences, and if the sentence contains too many words I don’t know (more than 2 is too many, and sometimes 2 itself is too many depending on the words/sentence), I will not copy it into Anki.

Recently, I have begun using Koohi Cafe to review unknown words before reading new pages of a light novel, and this has been incredibly helpful. Even so, Koohi Cafe doesn’t manage to grab every single word for some reason or another, so my routine is usually:

Go through Koohi Cafe and add 25-30 new words per day for the current book (right now it’s SAO 1). Then read as many pages as I can get through with those new words. Along the way, I’ll highlight any additional unknown words I come across that Koohi didn’t pick up. I’ll look up these words as I go, using the Japanese-Japanese dictionary if possible, or Jisho/Weblio/etc. if not. Depending on how the session goes/how I feel/how many pages I got through, I might go back to Koohi Cafe and add another 5-10 words so that I can read a few more pages.

After my reading is done, I go back through the words I highlighted and make Anki cards out of the sentences. Then, the next day, I will re-read those pages and hopefully be able to get through every word with no problem. Then I repeat for the next batch of pages. I probably average 6-8 pages a day, but I’ve noticed that the further I get in the book, the fewer new words I need to learn/look up, so I can read more pages at a time without tiring myself out.

Each morning I do my reviews in WK, Anki, Bunpro, and Koohi Cafe. This is more time on SRS than I had originally planned on, but I’m on pace to finish WK in about 6 more weeks, so things should start to ease up a bit on me soon. :slight_smile:

I spend 5-6+ hours a day reviewing SRS and reading, so I realize most people probably don’t have this amount of free time. I work from home, am unmarried, and have no social life thanks to COVID, so…

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Thanks! That are indeed incredible hours each day.
Sadly, that is not how much time I will make for Japanese right now. Maybe when my priorities shift in the future.
Thank you for sharing. You do amazing!

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So I’ve just completed Persona 5 (in English) and loved it. But I hear that a ton of new content was added to Persona 5 Royal. But I can’t really justify buying a second copy of the same game…but what if I were to buy the Japanese version? That way it doubles as a learning tool and it’s a story I’m already familiar with. Plus the added challenge of some new content to keep things interesting. My only problem is I do not know nearly enough vocab and grammar just yet.

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Persona 5 is an extremely text-heavy game with lots of slang, contractions, casual speech, etc.

If you don’t have much/any experience reading native material yet, I really wouldn’t recommend P5 for your first time out. :sweat_smile:

I mean, if you have the patience to slowly push through it, look up tons of words, do additional research to figure out the slang/contractions, and you’re okay with the fact that there are bits you won’t understand at all, then sure, why not? Oh, and you should also realize that if you’re serious about slowly reading through it, you can probably expect it to take a good 10x longer than it would take you to play it in English!

Just be sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.

If that sounds too crazy - you might want to think about aiming just a tiny bit lower to start out and then work your way up to P5!

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lol, that’s a good point! It took me a month to play through Persona 5 in English! :grin:

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I used the list for SAO 1 as well and I don’t particularly remember missing words, so it might be a settings problem.
I think the default setting is to only show words that appear at least three times in the book. It will also not show words that appeared before in the book (obviously).

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Hmm, I’ll have to take a look at/play with the settings a bit and see what’s up then. :face_with_monocle: Because it’s definitely skipping words here and there for me.

Sometimes the things I end up adding though are whole phrases or expressions that feel worth remembering to me but won’t show up in a dictionary (something like 一言に尽きる, for example). But I’ll keep what you said in mind when I do my reading tonight. Thanks! :smile:

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I also felt skeptical about repurchasing P5R after having paid for P5 Vanilla. I bought the German version and played 100 hours in German but ended up switching to English after that since I wanted to finish it faster. Still spent 150 hours on the game, so I think if you can buy a copy on sale it is worth buying again. The problem with Japanese copies are the lack of sales…though. Although to be fair paying full price for a 100+ hour game isn’t a bad deal either.

I had fun playing the game in German but the “ease” of playing is of course different from playing in English. I agree though if you have already played it in English, should make it easier to play in Japanese since you know the plot already ( minus the added Royal content).

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I’m about 30 hours into my second playthrough, bringing my total playtime to over 200 hours.

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I played (and still am playing) Persona 5 Royal in German, too. But I’m native hahaha.

You must be at a good level to get through it.

@ChaosControl does level 6 represent your Kanji knowledge? Then you should absolutely not play Persona 5 yet. You won’t enjoy the new content looking up 5 Kanji per sentence. It’s the harsh truth. If you want Royal get it on sale and maintain your sanity by playing it in another language.

It’s of course not only the Kanji. I played with the Japanese audio and while I could understand quite a few shorter sentences I have NO CLUE what the hell Ryuji is saying, like AT ALL :smiley:

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Male speech (especially the exaggerated kind found in anime, games, etc.) is infamously difficult for new learners. It gets better, don’t worry! The more “regular” speech and text you see, the better your brain will get at figuring out the contractions/missing words and filling in the gaps.

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An alternative for Persona fans who can’t quite justify to themselves importing a copy of Royal:

The Steam versions of Persona 5 Strikers and Persona 4 Golden both have Japanese fully listed in the “supported languages” section - meaning you can right click and play them in Japanese or English if you want without having to buy them twice.

Also, the switch version of Tokyo Mirage Sessions (which is basically a Persona game with a lighter atmosphere) similarly supports both languages (it responds to the system language setting on your console).

Personally though, I think importing Royal isn’t a bad idea if you have the money and don’t underestimate the difficulty. I was pretty lackadaisical with buying games in Japanese I thought I would never seriously be able to play, and it ended up being a fun motivator, and an especially meaningful accomplishment later on.

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Ooh yay. I was thinking about getting Persona 4 Golden on Steam soon anyway. So years ago (before I even knew about Wanikani) I bought a light novel in Japanese. Which is still sitting on my shelf, with the intention of reading it once my Japanese gets good enough. But I’m a bit intimidated by it, so I thought a videogame might be more beginner friendly (certainly not Persona 5 just yet!! I was just wondering if it’s worth getting for future reference).

My reasoning for this is that I taught my younger brother to read using Paper Mario. He went from not being able to read AT ALL to fluency in a couple of years. Because he REALLY loves Mario. So I thought I could sort of hack my brain in the same way.
Of course…the major difference being…my brother is a native English speaker, learning to read in English! :sweat_smile:

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I’d probably say a game is less beginner-friendly than a light novel, in that there’s more text and speech bombarding you everywhere that you have to more actively engage in than when reading a book.

BUT at the same time I’d say a game is more beginner-friendly than a light novel, in that it’s easier to have fun and want to keep going despite the challenge! So it’s a great way to get used to reading lots of text at a time, and that makes it easier to do that in a book too.

So both are great sources!

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So once again it comes down to “DO ALL THE THINGS!!!” or more realistically… “try a bit of everything and see what works!” :grin:

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Depends on the game too, of course :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
I started playing Doraemon Story of Seasons a while ago (it’s a farming game, some sort of crossover between Harvest Moon and, well, Doraemon)
Don’t even really know either of those things but I thought the game was really accessible in Japanese, even though it’s a little text heavy. I was a bit over N4ish level at the time and with a few occasional look ups here and there I understood enough to more or less know what’s going on/make it enjoyable. I don’t think I could say the same thing about something like a Persona game (not that I’ve tried)
I should get back to that some time soon once I have the time ;_;

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Funnily enough - Paper Mario: Origami King was the first game I completed from start to finish completely in Japanese without ever referencing the English version. There are other Japanese games I’ve completed, but they’re games I’ve already played in English or with a translation guide some years ago.

It was actually pretty easy to read and get through - and I had a ton of fun with it. It’s a pretty good “beginner” text-heavy Japanese game!

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Any opinion on Persona 5s difficulty on a scale from “Fire Emblem is no trouble” to “Dragon’s Dogma is a pain in the ass because no one talks like a person”?

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Since this has turned more into a general discussion at this point:

I´d definitely recommend Ace Attorney as a first (or second) game to learn japanese. I´m playing it right now and i have solved all the cases almost first try. It´s very rewarding and not too difficult!

Advantages:

  • features Kanji (you also learn a bunch of relevant ones around lvl 25)
  • lots of (samey) text
  • being an attorney and solving cases means you HAVE to know what´s going on
  • manuscript easily available online for vocab look-up
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I haven’t actually played Persona 5 yet (in either language) but my guess is it wouldn’t be far off from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I would guess the turn-based gameplay and amount of voiced dialogue would be big pluses.

I did play Tokyo Mirage Sessions in Japanese and I found that totally doable for those reasons. My (not especially informed) impression is that Persona 5 would be like that but with a more intimidating and complex atmosphere and story.