When I was a kid, my dad and I always played FFX together. The menu was in German, since that was the console's language, but all the dialogue is in English, which is how I learned a lot of words like antidote and defense, etc.! It really helped me to learn English. So, recently I got back into studying Japanese and looked up a Japanese Let's Play, which I've been really enjoying. I know the story by heart, so while the Kanji and move names and all of that are hard to understand, I actually found I understand much more of the dialogue than I thought I would. It's been really motivating and it has also helped a lot with my Katakana skills. Thank you for the great list of recommendations! I'm not at the level where I could play a game in Japanese, but I'll come back to this in the future for sure😌
"Don't worry about understanding everything." "Make flashcards if you feel like it. If you don't then don't." Ty out here dropping wisdom. I'm really excited about Rune Factory 5, but since I have to choose between the English and Japanese version I will probably buy it in English in the end.
Yeah I like studying printed Japanese especially for reading comprehension, but writing it down doesn’t hurt! Gotta remind myself of that because even though I don’t review my notes, the act of writing them helps solidify it
I've never seen anyone online recommend sticking to Japanese -> English dictionary lookups, it's always "Once you're past the beginner stage, it's much better to switch to a J -> J dictionary" which never made sense to me. Why would you want to prolong the time it takes to look up a word? That's the most tedious part! Imagine someone learning English saw the word "tree" and had to look it up, what would be the better approach? A: Seeing "tree = 木" then getting back to the fun stuff 0.5s later, or B: Spending a few minutes (and extra dictionary lookups) to parse "a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground." I get that making sense of the definition is "extra practice" but I'd rather spend more time on the game/book/TV show than on wordy "dictionary-speak".
Yeah knowing how to read a dictionary basically only increases your skill of reading dictionaries and that’s definitely not why I’m learning Japanese lol
I always thought the idea was to increase exposure to the language. A lot of people that I talked to started using J-J dictionary by taking their existing deck and making it J-J and learning the dictionary words. Idk.
Just using video games seems perfectly doable(I haven’t tried it personally), but having core studies to go along with it really helps speed up learning. I’m at about 7 years and used this method + core studies with Japanese and I’m pretty functional with the language now. I guess it depends on what your goals are and what you vibe with doing 👀
This is great! Thanks for making this video!! I don't have a switch, but your advice applies to pretty much any console or learning a language through video games in general. Very enjoyable and informative :)
@@tystake I may not have started learning Japanese yet, but this video is definitely something I know I'll go back to refer to if I do end up doing it for fun at some point!
thats what exactly im doing. I always play Jrpgs in Japanese. Because of that ,Ive already learned a Handful of N1 Kanji. but the downside is u cant use it in casual conversation. You might sound like a novel narrator.
Yeah, one thing about this is you might sound like a video game character etc. sometimes. That’s a big reason why I like using Nativshark though, it helps me keep in mind what’s natural and what isn’t when I’m using games or almost any entertainment media for extra study time.
I have that same Animal Crossing Switch! I've been learning Japanese for 3-4 months now and never thought to use the Switch, have played Animal Crossing on and off for about 2 years, I think having it on Japanese will help a lot. I made up a bunch of flashcards I just heed to start using them. 😂 Excellent video, thank you!!❤
How do you balance between the idea of "You don't need to understand _everything_" and feeling like the game is "too hard" and that you should come back to it later? To me they feel like opposing ideas and I'm still struggling to find that middleground. It's too easy for me to have a bad day with a game and think "This is just too hard for me. What else could I play?"
I think this feeling is why I liked Animal Crossing and Pokemon so much early on, because if I felt overwhelmed by the language at any point, I could just stop trying and enjoy the game. And even when I did that, I still got exposure to reading stuff. So I think picking a game that you can play without needing to read most of the dialogue is a good call for starters.
Get on the Japanese Eshop, somehow find a way to get money in there, and grab yourself the Switch port of the Phone port of Dragon Quest 1. Elementary school kanji, everyone's super casual and direct, and the story itself is super simple. The versions are split between an international English/Korean/Chinese one and the Japanese one, sadly Oh, right, also 99.9% of the text waits for you to press A. That's a big point when you don't feel like screenshotting everything to go read slowly lol
I really don't get why publishers do this... like, that's the original language. You have to add a grand total of nothing in order to support it. And you're only cutting into your own profits and driving people towards piracy and region lock evasion (though honestly, why are regionlocks even a thing? Probably licensing, but again it just feels like it's encouraging piracy.) But it's a real big thing with otome games - all the lists recommend Amnesia as a great VN for language learning so i was like "sweet! I've got that game, I've played it." Then I check and there's no option to change the language. Sigh. If they're really worried about the extra space it takes up, then make the other language game files a free DLC. It's that goddamn simple.
Playasia lets you buy Japanese eshop cards. 1000, 1500, 3000, 5000, and 9000¥ denominations (5000¥ is approximately 45$ American as of this writing) Another way is to use the gold reward points from new games on the Japanese account.
Consoles evolution and we can now emulate Switch on the Steam Deck. I don't mean owning a Switch isn't necessary, I still have mine! Just because… It's so lightweight haha I have small hands and the steam deck breaks my wrists if I play for long periods (which, in fact, is what I do… no one can tell me 8h is enough haha). But the SD has things that Switch doesn't, like having all the PC catalogue just in your hands. Whenever you want. And the best is… We can switch language / voice if the game has the option to! 95% of the games I buy I check they have jpn option (subs, voice and interface) so I can change to it on my second time play. I just found some games don't allow this if you don't buy it on Japan (like Uncharted and some other) but this is just 1% of all the catalogue. Plus, you can find amazing offers that you can't on consoles (I bought Ni no Kuni 1 for less than 7€, and 2 for less than 9€. What a steal!). If I could use all my xbox games on Japanese… I would like to hear your opinions on this. I think SD is one of the best tools for us. Don't take me wrong, I still own my 3ds and switch haha And I'll keep them, but it's soooooo good to have all the catalogue on the same console. PS. If someone is asking, I own the first batch of Switch (you can get how FAN I'm of Nintendo) and yes, it's h4cked. It's the only way to have jp games on there… As I can't buy them here.
Thanks! I wanna make other parts for this eventually with more switch recs and other consoles etc. 👀 Yeah, NativShark isn’t the only way to learn but it’s nice because then you don’t have things you have to unlearn, which is what I dealt with especially at the beginning when I just had a hodgepodge of somewhat random (and super unnatural sometimes to the point of being unhelpful) learning resources haha
I really appreciate the video and have changed my switch to Japanese, but I’m confused by the part where use an English definition… can I just use google translate from Japanese to English for this? Thank you
I generally don’t recommend google translate because it can be very misleading. Tbh I think for beginners if you’re struggling to understand a lot, that’s okay. Use it as a refresher to see the words you know and learn a few that you don’t. You shouldn’t expect to understand everything and that’s okay because at the start, the point is just trying to get used to seeing a lot of Japanese^^ This is why the games I recommend at the beginner level tend to be able to be played without truly needing to understand what’s being said, and also I why I recommend your favorite game as the best game for you, cuz you know it already so the only new variable is the language, you’re not struggling to learn the game as well^^
That’s a completely viable option too 👍 I find that the act of making and using flashcards helps me remember things a lot better than if I just see it once in a game and move on, but if the word is important, you’ll probably see it again pretty soon. And gradually you’ll remember it through exposure. If you do want to try flashcards, I might recommend only making flashcards on words you want to use in your own Japanese in the near future. Or, just don’t do them at all if they aren’t fun / are stressful. That’s perfectly fine as well 🙂
Just a heads up, I made the mistake of downloading usotuke hime to momoku ouji without realizing that it doesn’t support Japanese on my switch! I just wanted to put that out there. Is there something I’m doing wrong to not be able to play it in Japanese?
I know it's been months since your comment, but in case you never found out: When you bought the game, did you make a Japanese account, and download it off the Japanese eshop? Or did you use your regular account to buy the game? Because using a non Japanese account would cause the problem that you faced.
I’m going to make a big video on this because I used a lot of different resources, but the main was a mix of Nihongoshark (which evolved into NativShark), grammar books, RTK at the very start, and some Anki decks I both found and made myself when studying with video games. Its a big mess to keep track of and I missed out with my listening and speaking skills big time because I didn’t have exposure to natural Japanese thanks to grammar books not actually representing the language as people speak it, so I’d recommend NativShark to avoid that issue. I have an affiliate link that gets you an longer free trial and helps support my channel in the description if you are interested in it. Again, this is a big video topic that I will cover in the future, but definitely feel free to join my discord if you want to discuss more about it!
@@tystake Well of course you’d recommend NativShark, you’ve got an affiliate link haha. So grammar guides and an SRS. Definitely good in the beginning stages. Thank you for your thorough response.
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When I was a kid, my dad and I always played FFX together. The menu was in German, since that was the console's language, but all the dialogue is in English, which is how I learned a lot of words like antidote and defense, etc.! It really helped me to learn English.
So, recently I got back into studying Japanese and looked up a Japanese Let's Play, which I've been really enjoying. I know the story by heart, so while the Kanji and move names and all of that are hard to understand, I actually found I understand much more of the dialogue than I thought I would. It's been really motivating and it has also helped a lot with my Katakana skills.
Thank you for the great list of recommendations! I'm not at the level where I could play a game in Japanese, but I'll come back to this in the future for sure😌
"Don't worry about understanding everything."
"Make flashcards if you feel like it. If you don't then don't."
Ty out here dropping wisdom.
I'm really excited about Rune Factory 5, but since I have to choose between the English and Japanese version I will probably buy it in English in the end.
If you buy it digitally does it support both languages?
@@tystake The Nintendo page only list French, German, English
as the supported languages for the English version :(
Yeah I like studying printed Japanese especially for reading comprehension, but writing it down doesn’t hurt! Gotta remind myself of that because even though I don’t review my notes, the act of writing them helps solidify it
I've never seen anyone online recommend sticking to Japanese -> English dictionary lookups, it's always "Once you're past the beginner stage, it's much better to switch to a J -> J dictionary" which never made sense to me. Why would you want to prolong the time it takes to look up a word? That's the most tedious part!
Imagine someone learning English saw the word "tree" and had to look it up, what would be the better approach? A: Seeing "tree = 木" then getting back to the fun stuff 0.5s later, or B: Spending a few minutes (and extra dictionary lookups) to parse "a woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground." I get that making sense of the definition is "extra practice" but I'd rather spend more time on the game/book/TV show than on wordy "dictionary-speak".
Yeah knowing how to read a dictionary basically only increases your skill of reading dictionaries and that’s definitely not why I’m learning Japanese lol
I always thought the idea was to increase exposure to the language. A lot of people that I talked to started using J-J dictionary by taking their existing deck and making it J-J and learning the dictionary words. Idk.
Great video! Hoping the algorithm brings it to more Japanese language learners.
Thank you! Looking forward to making more helpful videos in the future 🙂
Apparently it's starting to because here I am!
@@tystake yeah thanks Ty! my algorithm showed this to me because I am learning Japanese
It happened to me
It did to me
But I don't have nor can't buy a Switch.
actually true, this is exactly how I learned english but it's a process that took like 15 years+
Just using video games seems perfectly doable(I haven’t tried it personally), but having core studies to go along with it really helps speed up learning. I’m at about 7 years and used this method + core studies with Japanese and I’m pretty functional with the language now.
I guess it depends on what your goals are and what you vibe with doing 👀
New to add: Persona 5 . Intermediate - Advanced. And you can turn the Japanese on and off at will.
I know this video is for Japanese learners, but it’s still super helpful to me as a Korean learner. So thank you :)
Glad it’s helpful! Its so true though, I’ve also dabbled a bit in studying in Korean and plan on playing games when I get a bit more of a foothold 👀
Looking forward to the Korean video! Esp as a beginner
This is great! Thanks for making this video!! I don't have a switch, but your advice applies to pretty much any console or learning a language through video games in general. Very enjoyable and informative :)
Thanks for your kind words!
For sure, there’s definitely a lot of this that applies to studying in general. Glad it was able to help 🙂
@@tystake I may not have started learning Japanese yet, but this video is definitely something I know I'll go back to refer to if I do end up doing it for fun at some point!
Excellent video, Ty! Great advice and it really works. Looking forward to your next video.
Thanks! Always feel free to let me know if you have questions or a topic you'd want to see a video on
thats what exactly im doing. I always play Jrpgs in Japanese. Because of that ,Ive already learned a Handful of N1 Kanji. but the downside is u cant use it in casual conversation. You might sound like a novel narrator.
Yeah, one thing about this is you might sound like a video game character etc. sometimes.
That’s a big reason why I like using Nativshark though, it helps me keep in mind what’s natural and what isn’t when I’m using games or almost any entertainment media for extra study time.
I have that same Animal Crossing Switch! I've been learning Japanese for 3-4 months now and never thought to use the Switch, have played Animal Crossing on and off for about 2 years, I think having it on Japanese will help a lot. I made up a bunch of flashcards I just heed to start using them. 😂
Excellent video, thank you!!❤
Glad it was helpful! Good luck with your studies^^
Such a great video! I'll be sure to pick up a switch and play some Pokemon while i'm in the train each day for university.
10/10 strats 🙂
How do you balance between the idea of "You don't need to understand _everything_" and feeling like the game is "too hard" and that you should come back to it later? To me they feel like opposing ideas and I'm still struggling to find that middleground. It's too easy for me to have a bad day with a game and think "This is just too hard for me. What else could I play?"
I think this feeling is why I liked Animal Crossing and Pokemon so much early on, because if I felt overwhelmed by the language at any point, I could just stop trying and enjoy the game. And even when I did that, I still got exposure to reading stuff.
So I think picking a game that you can play without needing to read most of the dialogue is a good call for starters.
Thanks! I needed something like this haha
Glad it was helpful! 🙂
お疲れさまでした！
Loved the video! Very helpful :)
Thank you! I’m glad it was helpful ☺️
Great advice Ty. Thank you!
Thanks, glad you found it useful!
This video is great 👍 you maybe transferred another places but I think you can do anything. Everything will be fine.
That’s very kind of you to say! I appreciate it, thank you ☺️
For me Persona 4 - 5 - 3 are the best for learning Japanese
Get on the Japanese Eshop, somehow find a way to get money in there, and grab yourself the Switch port of the Phone port of Dragon Quest 1. Elementary school kanji, everyone's super casual and direct, and the story itself is super simple. The versions are split between an international English/Korean/Chinese one and the Japanese one, sadly
Oh, right, also 99.9% of the text waits for you to press A. That's a big point when you don't feel like screenshotting everything to go read slowly lol
I really don't get why publishers do this... like, that's the original language. You have to add a grand total of nothing in order to support it. And you're only cutting into your own profits and driving people towards piracy and region lock evasion (though honestly, why are regionlocks even a thing? Probably licensing, but again it just feels like it's encouraging piracy.)
But it's a real big thing with otome games - all the lists recommend Amnesia as a great VN for language learning so i was like "sweet! I've got that game, I've played it." Then I check and there's no option to change the language. Sigh.
If they're really worried about the extra space it takes up, then make the other language game files a free DLC. It's that goddamn simple.
Isnt this on the eshop regardless of region?
Playasia lets you buy Japanese eshop cards. 1000, 1500, 3000, 5000, and 9000¥ denominations (5000¥ is approximately 45$ American as of this writing)
Another way is to use the gold reward points from new games on the Japanese account.
Gonna do this with French cuz that would be cool
Consoles evolution and we can now emulate Switch on the Steam Deck. I don't mean owning a Switch isn't necessary, I still have mine! Just because… It's so lightweight haha I have small hands and the steam deck breaks my wrists if I play for long periods (which, in fact, is what I do… no one can tell me 8h is enough haha).
But the SD has things that Switch doesn't, like having all the PC catalogue just in your hands. Whenever you want. And the best is… We can switch language / voice if the game has the option to! 95% of the games I buy I check they have jpn option (subs, voice and interface) so I can change to it on my second time play. I just found some games don't allow this if you don't buy it on Japan (like Uncharted and some other) but this is just 1% of all the catalogue. Plus, you can find amazing offers that you can't on consoles (I bought Ni no Kuni 1 for less than 7€, and 2 for less than 9€. What a steal!). If I could use all my xbox games on Japanese…
I would like to hear your opinions on this. I think SD is one of the best tools for us. Don't take me wrong, I still own my 3ds and switch haha And I'll keep them, but it's soooooo good to have all the catalogue on the same console.
PS. If someone is asking, I own the first batch of Switch (you can get how FAN I'm of Nintendo) and yes, it's h4cked. It's the only way to have jp games on there… As I can't buy them here.
really good recommendations, the native shark looks really interesting , but it's too expensive for a student
Thanks! I wanna make other parts for this eventually with more switch recs and other consoles etc. 👀
Yeah, NativShark isn’t the only way to learn but it’s nice because then you don’t have things you have to unlearn, which is what I dealt with especially at the beginning when I just had a hodgepodge of somewhat random (and super unnatural sometimes to the point of being unhelpful) learning resources haha
I really appreciate the video and have changed my switch to Japanese, but I’m confused by the part where use an English definition… can I just use google translate from Japanese to English for this? Thank you
I generally don’t recommend google translate because it can be very misleading. Tbh I think for beginners if you’re struggling to understand a lot, that’s okay. Use it as a refresher to see the words you know and learn a few that you don’t. You shouldn’t expect to understand everything and that’s okay because at the start, the point is just trying to get used to seeing a lot of Japanese^^
This is why the games I recommend at the beginner level tend to be able to be played without truly needing to understand what’s being said, and also I why I recommend your favorite game as the best game for you, cuz you know it already so the only new variable is the language, you’re not struggling to learn the game as well^^
@@tystake awesome ok thanks! I’m gonna document my journey!
@@BimzLab do it!!! 😄
I learn Russian with my switch for the past 4 years
Yeah, it’s great for all languages 👀
What about not using flashcards or SRS at all?
That’s a completely viable option too 👍
I find that the act of making and using flashcards helps me remember things a lot better than if I just see it once in a game and move on, but if the word is important, you’ll probably see it again pretty soon. And gradually you’ll remember it through exposure.
If you do want to try flashcards, I might recommend only making flashcards on words you want to use in your own Japanese in the near future.
Or, just don’t do them at all if they aren’t fun / are stressful. That’s perfectly fine as well 🙂
Just a heads up, I made the mistake of downloading usotuke hime to momoku ouji without realizing that it doesn’t support Japanese on my switch! I just wanted to put that out there. Is there something I’m doing wrong to not be able to play it in Japanese?
I know it's been months since your comment, but in case you never found out:
When you bought the game, did you make a Japanese account, and download it off the Japanese eshop? Or did you use your regular account to buy the game?
Because using a non Japanese account would cause the problem that you faced.
What did you use for “core studies”?
I’m going to make a big video on this because I used a lot of different resources, but the main was a mix of Nihongoshark (which evolved into NativShark), grammar books, RTK at the very start, and some Anki decks I both found and made myself when studying with video games.
Its a big mess to keep track of and I missed out with my listening and speaking skills big time because I didn’t have exposure to natural Japanese thanks to grammar books not actually representing the language as people speak it, so I’d recommend NativShark to avoid that issue.
I have an affiliate link that gets you an longer free trial and helps support my channel in the description if you are interested in it.
Again, this is a big video topic that I will cover in the future, but definitely feel free to join my discord if you want to discuss more about it!
@@tystake Well of course you’d recommend NativShark, you’ve got an affiliate link haha. So grammar guides and an SRS. Definitely good in the beginning stages.
Thank you for your thorough response.
Nice Channel Bro! Just dropped a sub to you! Thanks for your help at the Subway 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻