No problem at all! It’s a confusing area to navigate. I definitely have some Japanese copies of games I unnecessarily imported in the past because I assumed it wasn’t possible to check supported languages or set them via the system language…
And playing Yakuza 7 in Japanese ended up being a huge joy for me and a massive milestone in my reading ability. So definitely any opportunity to potentially help share a little bit of that feeling is a welcome one!
My tutor advised me to stop reading this blog for practice and described their writing as ヤバい 
So I’m on the hunt for another casual Japanese source that isn’t too draining to read before work. Suggestions welcome!
I’ve decided to take a break from short stories and focus on manga and novels, as I think this will help me with my vocabulary. Short stories introduce a lot of new vocabulary and then just move on, while novels and manga will use certain words over and over. Then this morning I realized that the 夜カフェ book club won’t start until the end of March!!! Noesss! So I immediately pulled out 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 and read the first 4 pages! So far, I like it.
Another great thing is that Kinokuniya got my Yotuba books (vol 8-15) to me so fast! I opened them up this evening and got to admire all the beautiful cover art. 
Thanks @pocketcat and @sycamore for the mystery book suggestions!
Day 38: February 7th
365日にっぽんのいろ図鑑
Time spent: 9 min
Today’s color: 藍白 (あいじろ) - pale cyan; pale azure
I’m a fan of this one. According to the reading, the color of the Tokyo Sky Tree, スカイツリーホワイト, is based on this color.
まいにち暦生活 日本の暮らしを楽しむ365のコツ
Time spent: 12 min
Today’s reading was about frozen everything 
Some really cool words from today that were not in Jisho:
What else did I read?
海のどうぶつが可愛すぎて!
Amount read: 6 pages
Time spent: 39 min
It’s narwhal timeeeee~ Today I learned that usually only the male narwhals have “horns” (which are actually teeth) - but sometimes females have them too.
Behold the ultimate narwhal
Sort of a side note, but seeing English in the middle of Japanese-language manga always amuses me. I think it’s something about the font - I always imagine it being spoken in a very slow, loud, and clear manner for some reason xD Like low-key shouting. I do not know why it always reads that way to me. But this narwhal popping in saying “THIS IS A FANG.” is like peak comedy for me
Today’s whales:
Good words:
)February 7 
Home Post
Today I read some 風つよ in between classes; I missed the running boys!! As reluctant as they all are to become running boys haha. There was one part in particular where ハイジ was reciting rules for the 箱根駅伝 and it was just a wall of kanji, terrifying I figured it out though!
I also played some more 999 
More puzzle exploration with pauses for conversation; it’s still a lot of fun!
Not that I’m surprised really, but like every screenshot I took today was of サンタ lmao. Dude really went on some tangents:
Of course they are This was all started by some four-leaf-clover bookmark he found (which is interesting to say the least considering 四葉 exists) and super didn’t like because each of the leaves represents one of those words? And his reason for not liking those words is just so edgy anime boy: they’re all things that can be betrayed which immediately prompted both me and 淳平 to be like “who hurt you???” Then he started making 花言葉 puns:
Ah yes, love leaf words. It was all just so dramatic, this was him getting me to take the bookmark because he didn’t like it:
Like bro calm down it’s a clover I knew I came with this group for a reason haha.
And THEN I ended up on a whole tangent learning about おいちょかぶ because of サンタ of course, he started talking about numbers (guess that shouldn’t be shocking in this game) and 淳平 continued to echo my thoughts exactly:
Something about calling the number four half-assed is really funny Makes way more sense in the context of おいちょかぶ though. How very on brand for サンタ to be like “no me not liking four isn’t because of the whole death thing, it’s just boring” lmao
There was a lot of number talk all around in this section and you know what I don’t think that’s gonna stop, somehow I get the sense that’s a theme
(Also さんた is the term used for three in おいちょかぶ and that’s definitely not a coincidence, he’s just like this)
Anyway サンタ aside, I got some good reading done today! I’m constantly torn between playing 999, reading 風つよ, and reading ラストゲーム, but that’s a pretty good problem to have.
底力 - hidden reserves of strength, latent energy
考えれば考えるほど - the more I think about it
厄介払い - getting rid of a nuisance (ie. a bookmark)
今日び - nowadays
首謀者 - mastermind, ringleader
Loving the Santa updates! I had forgotten how ridiculous the dude is hahaha.
Maybe you already know this, but just in case you don’t (or for anyone else reading), ba…hodo with the same word before each is actually a grammar point with that same sort of “the more one does x” meaning for verbs, or just “the more X” for adjectives, so it can be applied more widely!
Oooh that makes sense good to know, thank you!!
(And yes lmao he’s absolutely wild, every word that comes out of his mouth is a trip)
(reading on the weekdays and taking breaks on the weekends)
In this page Sacchan looks at the drawing that Yui drew, and is utterly shocked that it’s a monster! Nearly immediately after seeing it, Kotoha decides she wants to kill it. Yui, the ever polite, seems to be taken aback and says how killing is wrong. So, despite passive protests from Kotoha that “it’s a monster, we must kill it!”, Sacchan says that they should capture it instead. Finally, they all agree that they’ll start their huge operation and capture the monster-cat!
@Zakarius @Daisoujou - another option for Yakuza if playing on PC is that (I think they still) are all on X box game pass (which you can also get on PC). I only tried it with Yakuza 0 but when I set my PC system language to Japanese it automatically set game pass to Japanese and I could play the game with Japanese voice and text. I only played a bit as realistically it’s still above my abilities haha, but it seemed to work well!
Monobeno
Read some more of it. There were parts I didn’t understand but it seems that was kansei ben.
Yamada kun and the Seven Witches Vol.2
Not as fun as the first volume but I still enjoyed it. I read the remaining 40 pages.
Prison School Vol.1
Started reading it (20 pages) I don’t even know what it’s about but I got it for free from bookwalker. If it’s boring I will just stop reading it,
Today I read four pages of Death Note and fourteen pages of The Way of the Househusband.
A couple interesting vocabulary I learnt were:
名探偵-------めいたんてい--------great detective
超能力-------ちょうのうりょく------extra-sensory perception; ESP
Read only page 135 of 銭天堂 today. I definitely had a fair few chances to get some reading done, but didn’t take them, oops lol. Tomorrow I’ll see if I can read more.
Today’s reading was 坂口健太郎が考える、エゴを捨てて“流される”ことの強さ 「本当は空っぽのリュックで旅立てるはず」 because I figured why not. Mentioned Sakaguchi as being a good actor in the Japanese film fest thread yesterday.
Thought this bit was interesting:
「間違い」なんてものはないってことがわかったからなんですよね。今って失敗が許されにくい世の中だから、たったひとつの間違いですべてが台無しになってしまうこともたくさんある。
I could never be a celebrity. Far too stressful.
In other news I got a shipment of used books from ebay last night and I’m so excited 
I actually abandoned a book I’d been reading during ‘down time’ from ロクヨン because I wasn’t enjoying it much. Might come back to it later, unsure. But, I started パパの愛した悪女 because that title alone suggests it’s gonna be saucy and I’ve already read two books by 赤川次郎 and enjoyed them.
Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220208 
Tanuki Scroll XXXIX: ウグイス長者 
Read today’s folktale, about a man discovering a mansion in a bamboo grove that is home to some warblers posing as humans. These cute little guys:
☆ Learnings ☆
ウグイス「鶯」ー Japanese bush warbler; Japanese nightingale (also, that is a really nice kanji)
♪ホーホケキョ♪ ー The noise that the warbler makes
いつの間にか「いつのまにか」ー Before one knows of; Unnoticed; Unware of
やぶ「藪」ー Thicket; Bush; Grove
薄暗い「うすぐらい」ー Dim; Gloomy
さまよう「彷徨う」ー To loiter; to wander around
季節外れ「きせつはずれ」ー Out of Season
迷う「まよう」ー To get lost; to waver/hesitate
まま「儘」ー As it is; as one likes
@sycamore & @rodan, thanks for the information about playing Yakuza in Japanese! Think it’s very much beyond me still, but I’ll give it a try at some point!
Adding to the yakuza talk. Both Yakuza 7 and Lost Judgment have auto-advance text in the main story. I already found it annoying in English, so some caution there to either read fast or focus more on listening. That said you can rewatch scenes from the main menu options.
For sidequests you can actually pause it (on ps4 it was R3 I think). Remembering the Japanese demo of Yakuza 7, available on the JP psn store, there’s also two style font options. One is more classical and the other is standard.
Today I read three 記事 in a row, which is my new record. One of the reasons was that the topics were quite interesting: show blockade in Sapporo, first bronze medal for Japan in figure skating, queen Elizabeth suggestion for the next queen.
It is really rewarding to notice how your reading starts improving and how you can notice more known kanji and words. Still, need more grammar. Guess it is time to learn another 5 conjugations. 
P.S. Noticed talks about Yakuza. i am a huge fan, so maybe someone can enlighten me about its average vocab level? N3? N2? Really want to play it in original, but it is beyond my capabilities right now from my english version knowledge.
Day 30: February 7
I started reading 鹿の王 on my tablet, no idea yet what it is about, but we shall see!
Day 31: February 8
Today I installed a ebook reader for webbrowser that works with Yomi-chan, so I decided to start reading キノの旅! A new book means that I have to start getting used to a different author, but so far it isn’t that hard! The only thing that really got me is the fact that my companion is a talking motorcycle (too a while for me to find out it was not a person and a separate bike…). So far we only encountered a city without humans, but with some machines that keep the city clean. Really wondering where this story is going!
Update: They found a human that was tending to one of the machines, so maybe I will get some answers next time I read ^^
Prison school is really special in a way you can’t image before reading it. The humour is amazing and the characters are weird, but that makes the story even better. Just don’t take it too seriously xD
I would say it’s difficult to map to JLPT terms because the JLPT is unlikely to cover organized crime slang, dialects, or things yelled during a street fight. 
Since the games cover so much ground both in the main plot and side activities, there’s also just a whole lot of vocabulary in general across many subjects.
At the extreme, stuff like restaurant food descriptions or mahjong, etc. can be stuffed with speciality vocabulary (but can be avoided without compromising any of the story). For the main stuff, understanding contractions and epithets often used by aggressive men + some basic vocabulary around yakuza organizations would probably be the biggest obstacles.
There’s subtitles for everything though (without furigana).
When I played 7 in Japanese, I spent a whole lot of time pausing (note: in 7, and I think most games in the series, I remember the subtitles in cutscenes thankfully being visible when paused - I remember this not being the case with Lost Judgment though) looking up words on my phone. At the time (I had completed WK but not done very much vocabulary mining and reviewing outside of it) I would do this pretty much constantly and the amount just slowly decreases with each game I play this way (I’m dabbling with Kiwami 2 now and I think it’s my… fifth? in Japanese and I wouldn’t say I have to look up very much at all, but that’s been a long time coming…).
But I played 7 at a time when I thought for sure I wouldn’t be ready, and I’m really glad I did since I learned a ton and gained a whole lot of confidence from the process (and loved the game)!
So the high level of vocabulary can be a positive, since it’s a very fun way to jump into the deep end, so to speak, and get exposure to a lot of different topics.
6 pages of 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 today! I kept thinking “I’ll just finish this one last page …”
