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82 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
Have used many other programs and this is by far the best!
Let me start by saying that I have been studying Japanese off and on for many years now. I learned some of the basic words and simple sentence structures as well as to read and write Katakana. However, I've never made a serious attempt to go beyond that, until now.
I have used many computer Japanese learning programs and found all of them to be totally...
Published 23 months ago by M. Saunders
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146 of 163 people found the following review helpful:
I really wanted to love this program...
I can tell that a lot of people are in the same boat as me. They've been waiting for a DS program that teaches Japanese (with an English-language interface) for so long. They had such high hopes! It has a cute sensei! Whack-a-mole! A thousand lessons! Yeah, lots of romaji... but we can get past that!
Unfortunately, it also has some serious errors in the...
Published 22 months ago by Kathy Grace
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82 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
Have used many other programs and this is by far the best!, October 18, 2008
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
Let me start by saying that I have been studying Japanese off and on for many years now. I learned some of the basic words and simple sentence structures as well as to read and write Katakana. However, I've never made a serious attempt to go beyond that, until now.
I have used many computer Japanese learning programs and found all of them to be totally inadequate. I was cautiously optimistic about this DS title, but for under $[...] I decided to give it a try. Wow, I am impressed! The lessons are well structured and introduce around 10 words per lesson (from what I've seen so far), unlike books which want you to remember dozens and dozens of words right from the start. The voice quality is superb and (unlike most other recordings I have heard) does not speak so fast that you can't follow it. I love the feature where you can record your voice and compare it to the native speaker's, including comparing the wave forms. This helps you learn the correct timing and pace when speaking. The games are fun, but you need pretty fast reflexes for the whack-a-mole game unless you set it on easy.
This program does have a few flaws. The stroke order for a few of the kanas is off (stroke order is VERY important in writing Japanese correctly). Also, hiragana is introduced too slowly in my opinion, but this is probably intentional as to not scare off people who have never written in Japenese. That being said, if you are serious about learning Japanese this shouldn't be your only resource anyways. I highly recommend Easy Hiragana: First Steps to Basic Japanese Writing (Passport Books) and especially Easy Katakana.
Despite these minor issues, I think that any serious student of Japanese will benefit immensely from using this program. Motivation and determination are required to learn any language since it takes a huge investment of time and study. Using something that is as engaging as this will keep you interested. Plus, it is a game system after all, so if you need a break you can always pop in Zelda for a while! ;)
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146 of 163 people found the following review helpful:
I really wanted to love this program..., November 2, 2008
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
I can tell that a lot of people are in the same boat as me. They've been waiting for a DS program that teaches Japanese (with an English-language interface) for so long. They had such high hopes! It has a cute sensei! Whack-a-mole! A thousand lessons! Yeah, lots of romaji... but we can get past that!
Unfortunately, it also has some serious errors in the writing training. Specifically:
Incorrect hiragana: na mo ya yo
Incorrect katakana: e ka chi ne no hi me ya wa wo
In other words, about 15% of the basic kana characters are taught and/or graded wrong in this program. Count 'em, 14 kana have either wrong stroke order, wrong stroke direction, or wrong stroke count. AAAAAGHHHH! How could they?
No, really... seriously, how COULD they? The correct stroke order for kana is in any number of reference books. You could choose from a dozen or more on Amazon. It's not some arcane 18-stroke kanji--we're talking about characters with four, three, two.. even, for pete's sake, ONE stroke. (Katakana "no" should be drawn north-to-south, not the other way.)
The worst thing is, lots of people using this program are going to be brand-new to Japanese and won't even know they're being taught wrong.
Writing Japanese is not like writing English. You can write a "t" with the vertical line first or the cross stroke first, and nobody cares. But Japanese is not like that. Stroke order matters. Ironically, the animated Haruku-sensei harps on that point a lot.
Ya know, I read the reviews that said there were a few problems with stroke order, and I still bought MJC. I figured, what the heck, it's probably just one or two things, they're probably low-usage characters, whatever. Ack, wrong. I mean, some of these syllables are used a lot--a LOT--in Japanese. It's as though you were a non-English speaker being taught to write your Gs and Ss backwards and your Ns and Us upside down.
Oh well... apart from that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
The interface is cute. I'm not crazy about most of the games I've unlocked so far... I find myself going to my three favorites again and again: flashcards (set on hard, so you get only audio cues); writing cards; and multiple choice. Those three will actually teach you something (word search in romaji?? really now). The placement test is not thorough enough--I don't know the days of the week at all, but somehow I got skipped past that lesson.
The vocabulary seems fairly well chosen (although they do start off with a strange selection of verbs--I would never have put kagayaku [glow], shinu [die], or osu [push] among the first two dozen verbs to learn in a foreign language). I wish there were exercises that actually gave you practice conjugating verbs, but perhaps that comes later on in the program. The audio is nice, and the fonts are readable. There's a dictionary, which also subsets to your learned-words list, and lots of tracking info. There are slots for three players (handy in my three-person household).
I dunno--I STILL really want to love this program, but I'm afraid Ubisoft (or whoever actually did the content) did a crappy job with it. If they got that many kana wrong, how in the world is one to trust the kanji? I'm going to bite the bullet and go buy Kakitori Kun 2 from an import house--it's got a Japanese interface, but I'll figure it out eventually, and I'll be confident I'm learning how to write correctly.
P.S. Guess I should add... if your main goal is to speak Japanese, this program should be fine. I know that not everyone places as high a value on being able to write Nihongo correctly as I do.
[EDITED TO ADD: The dictionary has a very nice feature: click on a verb and you'll get three pages of verb-specific info: formal and informal conjugations for non-past, past, neg non-past, and neg past; a list of bases 1-5 plus -ta and -te; and more conjugations (volitional, imperative, etc.) This is cool. Shame about the kana blunders, though--they've poisoned the well.]
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26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
Never thought learning Japanese could become addicting . . ., October 17, 2008
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
Well, it finally came out, and I bought it RIGHT away from my nearest game store. My Japanese coach is for the nintendo DS That helps you to learn Japanese. You learn to read kanji, write in Japanese, listen to Japanese, vocabulary, useful phrases . . . so far it seems to be worth the money I spent on it ($30).
The back of the case says that there are over 1,000 lessons, 1500 phrases, and close to 10,000 words in this game. I'm going to guess that at the moment, I know maybe 500 phrases, 300 kanji, and about 2500 words (and that's all being generous I bet). I could potentially DOUBLE my Japanese knowledge of Japanese if I finish this game, so I'm excited.
Anyways, a quick game review. You start off the game by taking a placement test in Japanese. They ask you 50 questions, usually relating to a vocabulary word, or how to read a certain kana character. If you miss two, then it stops the quiz and calculates your starting level (I scored 50/50 and moved directly to lesson 11.) The lessons are rather simple. It sticks to one type of topic, for example, using the "desu" form. The game gives you a couple of examples, introduces 10 new vocabulary, and then stops halfway thru to ask you if you want to practice what you have learned. This usually is in the form of a quiz/game, which are integral to "leveling up", or unlocking the next lesson. Only after you fill up the mastery gauge of each vocab/phrase/character, will you be able to move on.
Having only just started, it seems like aside from mastering the romaji versions of the vocab through memory games and listening (maybe 10 more types of games as well), you can also work on writing your hiragana and katakana, which will progressively become more difficult and become inserted into more of your lessons as you master them (I can only assume that at a certain point, most of your lessons will be conducted entirely in Japanese, or at a level concurrent to your Japanese skill). It should also be noted that you can record your voice when learning new phrases, and listen to the game read them as well. There are also some really cool bonuses in the game too. There is a dictionary, phrasebook, and a really cool way to track your progress.
The game also tells you at what level you would be at if you lived in Japan. At the moment, I can express myself as much as a 1st Grader (363 words mastered), but that will change as I work my way through the game. This is a great game for anybody with a background in Japanese already and will help you to practice your weaker areas. Personally, I can't wait to get into practicing Kanji and learning some new words in preparation for the San-kyuu proficiency test this winter.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Not for Serious Students of Japanese, January 13, 2009
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
First of all, a little background so you know where this review is coming from: I currently live in Japan and have been studying the language off and on for the past 8 years. That said, I still have a lot to learn and while I can engage in basic everyday conversation, I am far from being fluent. I have many years experience both teaching and learning foreign languages in academic and professional environments.
This piece of software seems to be quite popular with folks who have never tried to study Japanese before, but if you have any sort of training in the language it is a waste of time. If you can read and understand the following sentence, I'd definitely recommend that you save your time and money and don't bother with this piece of software:
watashi wa nihongo wo benkyou shimasu.
I can overlook the minor flaws in kana stroke order, but what is ridiculous is the fact that even if you ace the beginning level placement test with a 50/50 (100%) score, you only get placed up to lesson 11 -- learning overly simplistic vocabulary words like man, woman, and cat. The developers should have made the level placement test more diagnostic so that it could actually accurately assess ones true level. As it is, people with any sort of prior training in Japanese will have spend several days muddling through dozens of boring and useless lessons/minigames in order to unlock the higher levels which may be of actual use.
The game may give absolute beginners a very rudimentary introduction to Japanese, but even the teaching style leaves a lot to be desired and I believe beginning Japanese learners would actually get more out of visiting places like japanesepod101 (a free Japanese language learning podcast site) or buying a basic Japanese textbook like the Genki or Japanese For Busy People series and making flashcards to memorize their kana.
Japanese language training on the DS is a nice idea and I'd really love to see more language training software for the DS be made available in the future. However, "My Japanese Coach" is marred by a frustrating leveling system and a haphazard approach to learning the language.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
My Japanese Coach, October 16, 2008
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
Nov. 2, 2008:
Updating my review, I think if I could I'd have to knock this down another star. My initial happiness has been dashed. I just can no longer overlook the problems with stroke order, the uselessness of the romaji, the growing certainty that this is just a re-hashed French or Spanish game engine, and other quibbles. I'm at level 33 now and still there's too much romaji, when do I do kanji? If you're determined to stick with it, and very carefully work hard from other sources to correct the problems with this game, then you might do OK but I think I'm going to start putting more time into my books and online resources. Man, they came so close to getting it right though, oh well, maybe next time?
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original review, Oct. 16, 2008:
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I don't at all mean to be mean or anything, but I really doubt anyone will learn 75 words, 10 phrases, and 15 kana (perhaps Cindy means she "saw" them?) from a raw start in Japanese in 2 hours using "My Japanese Coach". Fantastic if you prove me wrong though. By learn, of course, I mean be able to use them relatively easily and well later on away from this software.
I got my copy yesterday, and yes, it's pretty fun, and yes, I'm sure you can learn something from it. I wish I'd had it when I was starting out & I also heartily recommend it for beginners. But for more advanced students, and busy adults, it's looking like it's going to take some patience to level up past the romaji (I'm on lesson 17, and still romaji everywhere, and darn those darned moles you gotta whack!). I can't wait to finally get to working on some kanji! I hope I get to work on some kanji...
Overall so far, to be honest, I'm kinda disappointed in it, it feels rushed. I don't like the whack-a-mole game and feel like I could better use my time to learn Japanese in a better way. The memory game is obnoxious as well. However, you can "level up" by playing the games you do like over & over it seems.
Some of the stroke orders for the kana are off, and this really shows up in the "Fading Characters" game, which also has some timing problems if you write really fast. I hate to be penalized when I'm writing in the correct stroke order so then have to switch to a wrong one to "get through".
To the good, the feature to let you record your voice to compare it to a native speaker is fantastic. The dictionary also looks very good, though nothing can compete with the superb "Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten". I really like some of the games, including the very addictive "Word Search", if only it was in kana!!! The "Phrasebook" feature looks fantastic, haven't really played with it yet. That + the dictionary might be enough reason to buy this if you're going to Japan.
Hope I'm not spoiling the fun here, I was waiting for a couple of months for my pre-order to come in, and I finally have it, and I'm glad! I would say, if you're a DS owner & have any interest in studying Japanese, go ahead & get it, it's cheap enough so you won't regret it. If you're just starting to learn Japanese I would say definitely get it. In either case, it can only serve as a supplement to real lessons of some sort, and you need to learn hiragana & katakana as soon as possible, and then rapidly get started on kanji. Spending too much time on romaji is something you'll regret, a LOT, later on.
The game is pretty unique, and I sure hope we see more like it. I really hope Ubi will come out with a more polished, advanced version, that doesn't seem so aimed at kids.
Just don't expect too much from "My Japanese Coach", and enjoy it for what it is. Oh, and like I mentioned, look out for stroke order, I've noticed that it expects the wrong order for "yo", and in some of the games it accepts some really shoddy input that it should correct you on. I highly recommend the "Manga de Kana" & related books to help you learn kana, get a cheap 3x5 notebook to carry with it & you're in business. Now go learn some Japanese!
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Made it to lesson 339., November 12, 2009
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
I have had this game for nine months. When I started using it, I already had some experience with Japanese but so long ago that I had forgotten almost all of it. This game is good for someone in my position or for someone who has taken one class or has studied it on their own but is still a beginner. I think this game will be annoying for intermediates or advanced Japanese learners. The game helped me a lot. Mostly the game helped me to learn a lot of vocabulary and made me read and write hiragana very fluently. I usually find learning vocabulary in another language to be very tiresome. I hate memorizing things. But this game makes it somewhat less boring to learn a lot of new words because of the game format. There are several games. They are not all immediately available to you. You have to unlock some of them as you progress in the game. The games in order that you unlock them are:
multiple choice--You are given a word in English and you must choose the japanese word (written in hiragana).
hit-a-word--This is wack-a-mole with a word given in English and you hit the mole that has the correct Japanese word written underneath him (in Hiragana again except for when the lesson is a kanji lesson).
word search--You are given the words in English and you find them in Japanese in a word search (the Japanese is given in Romaji).
fading characters--The Japanese romaji word is given and you trace over the same word that is given in hiragana, katakana or kanji (if it is a kanji lesson). After you trace the characters, you write them yourself on the blank screen.
write cards--This is almost like fading characters except you are never given anything to trace. You are only given the blank screen.
flash cards--You are given a word in hiragana or a kanji and you must choose the matching English meaning from four choices.
memory--This is also known as concentration. You flip cards over to match up hiragana words or kanji to their english meaning. There are always 10 new vocabulary or 10 new kanji in every lesson so there are always 20 cards to match up.
bridge builder--Words are given in romaji. You must arrange the words in the correct order to make a Japanese sentence. Not every lesson has this game available for the new vocabulary. This game is nice when it works but the sentences are very basic so if you aren't a beginner, this will be worthless to you. Also, this game becomes very annoying after lesson 100 because there is some sort of glitch in the game that causes MJC to suddenly force you to play this every few lessons. What is especially annoying is that it does not give you new sentences so every few lessons, you end up being given the exact same sentences over and over again. As far as I can tell, it never gives you any new sentences no matter how many times you earn points by correctly constructing the sentences you are given.
spelltastic--This is sort of like hangman. Except there is no scaffold or man to hang. But you do have to guess what the word is and you choose the letters one at a time in order. I think it would be better if you didn't have to choose the letters in order. I don't play this game at all because it is all romaji. I don't play any of the games that make you use romaji.
fill-in-the-black--You are given a basic sentence in romaji with one word missing. You are also given the sentence in english. You type in the missing Japanese word in romaji. I don't use this game either.
yomi--This game only uses new vocabulary when it is a kanji lesson. Otherwise it reviews previously learned kanji. In this game you practice writing first one hiragana reading and then its kanji. But the kanji are very small and you can't see all the lines often so if you don't know all the strokes, you won't be able to write the kanji.
scrolls--This gives you basic Japanese sentences written in romaji. One word in the sentence is highlighted in red. You write the hiragana for the highlighted word. Once you have learned your hiragana, this game is boring.
This game was a good game for me. I made a lot of progress in Japanese using the game. Once you aren't a beginner anymore, you really progress past the level of this game. The game is good for learning some basics and learning vocabulary. But if you want to pass the jlpt n3, n2, or n1, this game will not help because it does not give the vocabulary in kanji most of the time. In 80 percent of the lessons, the vocabulary is provided in hiragana. There are kanji lessons but there is not enough focus on kanji to make you kanji literate.
I have some kanji study books for children that teach correct kanji stroke order. After learning correct kanji stroke order, it is pretty annoying that some of the kanji in MJC force you to use incorrect stroke order. I specifically recall that the stroke order MJC uses for horse (uma or ba) and bird (tori or chou) is totally wrong. But overall, this is more of a minor annoyance and would not stop me from having bought the game even looking in retrospect. But just be aware that you will learn some incorrect stroke orders for several kanji and hiragana characters in MJC.
I am glad that I used this game when I was in the beginner stage. I still use the game to learn new vocabulary. But it cannot be my only learning resource. I also watch Japanese movies and tv shows, read grammar books, study on the internet, and use books and electronics that are specifically designed for learning kanji. But my first few months, I depended almost entirely on MJC and I made a lot of early progress using it. This is how I feel about the game after 9 months and having gotten to lesson 339. I am still no where near lesson 1000. The following is how I felt about the game when I first started using it and I made updates occasionally. Hope this helps you make a good decision for yourself as to whether to buy it or not.
November '09: I lived in Japan for one year about twenty years ago. Without any exposure to Japanese since then, I had forgotten most of my Japanese. My Japanese Coach arrived in my mailbox one week ago and since then I have played it obsessively. I am now at lesson 106. I feel like I have recovered about 70 percent of my Japanese. It really refreshed my vocabulary and grammar. This is a great game for people who need a review of basic Japanese kana, vocab and grammar. I think beginners would get something out of it, also, because it provides a native speaker who says words. I think that will be helpful to beginners. I also think being able to record your voice and hear it played back with a comparison to a native speaker will be helpful for beginners.
There has been a lot of talk about the stroke order errors in the game but I think I found a major grammatical error that no one has ever mentioned. Lesson 49 is about how to say you need something. It presents the two main ways to say something is needed or necessary as 'hitsuyou' and 'iru' . It gives two example sentences using 'hitsuyou'. This is then followed by two example sentences using the construction '...nai to ikemasen.' No examples are ever given using 'iru' in a sentence. I can only assume that whoever created this lesson believes that 'iru' has some relationship to '...nai to ikemasen'. Certainly, any beginner and many intermediates will leave this lesson believing that the verb 'iru' (to need) somehow is related to the word 'ikemasen' or to the construction '...nai to ikemasen'. That is a terrible error. '...nai to ikemasen' actually is derived from the verb 'iku' (to go) and has the meaning of 'not doing (fill in the blank) is a no go'. So for example, if you wanted to say, "You should wear your seatbelt," you would say in Japanese (but I'll word it in English), "Not wearing your seatbelt is a no go." In other words, "Not wearing your seatbelt will not work" or "Not wearing your seatbelt is so not cool." But the verb used is the verb for 'to go'. You can see it has nothing whatsoever to do with the verb 'iru' that means 'to need'. If you were trying to learn Japanese and didn't know enough to figure this out, it could leave you really confused.
As to the stroke order mistakes...who really cares. I think that stroke order is very important. However, I think that if My Japanese Coach is as far as you are ever going to take your Japanese learning, then it doesn't matter what stroke order you use because you will never be more than a low beginner. If you are serious about your Japanese, then you will also buy other ds products that will teach you correct stroke order and more perfect writing. For example, you can buy a ds program on jlist or on Amazon.jp or play asia or yes asia or other sites to teach you calligraphy. It will make your stroke order and your character form nearly perfect. You can also buy kakitorikun or kanji dictionaries for ds and many other ds programs that will teach you many kanji along with perfect stroke order. So this is really a minor problem.
People have complained about some of the games but I notice that everyone complains about different games. A lot of complaints are about my favorite games. I think that it is good that many different games were included because people have different tastes in what they enjoy or what they learn from. Somebody said they found the memory game annoying. That is my favorite and the one I play the most. I think people who find the memory game annoying probably have poor working memories and are the type of people who can't remember a 10 digit phone number if someone tells it to them. I am not trying to make a value judgment about that. I am just saying that people have different needs. I find the flash cards and multiple choice games annoying because they are too easy. I have to agree that the spelltastic and other games that require the use of romaji are worthless. But who knows they might really help someone else.
After lesson 100, there are no more lessons. Instead you are given either vocabulary or kanji to memorize. Lesson 101 gave you 10 vocabulary words. You play the games until you prove you know the words then you can move to the next lesson. Lessons 102-104 also presented you with 10 vocabulary words each. Lesson 105 gives you 10 kanji to memorize. Lesson 106 gives you 10 vocabulary again. I am guessing that every fifth lesson is kanji and the rest are always vocabulary. After lesson 100, MJC makes no attempt to organize the vocabulary by any logical means whatsoever. It does not select them by frequency of occurrence in speech or in the newspaper. It does not organize them by subject matter. So basically, you could just as well be memorizing words out of the dictionary. Here is an example. These are the vocabulary in English (and I will provide the romaji although the lesson gives it in hiragana) from lesson 106: a little (chotto), prominent (juujouna), brainy (soumeina), magnet (jijuku), provision (kyoukyuu), stiff (katai), brandy (burandei), delirious (uwagoto wo iu), disparity (soui), dehydrate (dassuishoujuu wo okosu). When I first started using the game, I thought it was annoying that the words were randomly selected in lessons 101 to 1000. But now I see some advantages to that. It is a little fun to be surprised because you never know what word you will be presented with next. It mimics real life. And it prevents your mind from being confused by learning similar terms at the same time. There is some linguistic term for this that I don't remember. Sometimes it is better to memorize things that are very different from each other because then your mind is not as likely to cross its wires and confuse the items with each other.
The kanji in MJC is the 1945 joyou kanji. Keep in mind, however, that in 2010, the Japanese government is planning on adding a couple of hundred or so kanji to the official list and removing 5 others. The kanji for chestnut is on the chopping block to be removed from the list of official kanji, which makes me sad because I absolutely love chestnuts. Apparently, they are going to replace the kanji for 'chestnut' with the kanji for 'kit kat'. Ok, that last part was a joke. Sort of. If you know about Japan's national obsession with the kit kat bar and if you are as sad as I am about the replacement of traditional Japanese culture by westernization, then you will get my little joke.
In short, I would recommend this game for beginners to become acquainted with Japanese or for low intermediates to refresh their Japanese. You should not skip ahead in the lessons because the game does not very accurately judge what lesson you already know or don't already know so you might miss something important. It will only allow you to skip 11 or so anyway so just do them. If you are so good you can skip 20 lessons (there is a cheat code that will allow you to skip ahead), then you are way too advanced to use My Japanese Coach anyway and should instead buy a more advanced product such as a parallel text book with cd or kanji training ds program, etcetera. If you need the ego rush from proving to yourself how great you are by skipping lessons in a course that is too easy for you, then save the $30 on the game and go people watching at Walmart instead. By the way, the labeling of the levels in this game is stupid. When the 'high school' level in this game is reached, a learner still knows less Japanese than the average real first grader in Japan. So I don't get what the classification scheme is for except maybe to motivate the player and make them feel good that they are advancing? I guess it feels better to hear that you are now a 4th grader than, "Congratulations, you know as many words as the average 2 year and one month old in Japan and after the next lesson, you will have the vocabulary of a 2 year and 3 month old toddler. Keep working, you will be potty trained soon."
I did get a lot out of the game though. I feel competent at hiragana and katakana again. I am learning more kanji. I will probably keep playing with this game until I get around to ordering better kanji learning software. My plan is to buy either kakitorikun or nazotte oboeru kanji practice training or a calligraphy program for ds. But I am very glad that I started out with My Japanese Coach as my reintroduction to Japanese. It really does a good job of acquainting you or reacquainting you with the basics in a easy to use way. You will feel pretty solid about being able to approach a more difficult study course after using it. I don't think there is anything better out there right now for beginners or people who are really rusty other than living in Japan or taking a class. And I still think that My Japanese Coach would be useful to a novice to supplement their class or travel experience. Just remember it has a few mistakes in it so you will have to be open to learning things more perfectly from other sources as you advance in your Japanese.
December '09: I want to add to my review. I am now on lesson 152. I have found a way to make memorizing the vocabulary in the lessons more fun. I have started googling all of the japanese vocabulary words in romaji. I find out amusing and educational things out about Japan with every single word. For example, I googled 'koritsu' which means 'isolation' and found the word 'koritsu shugi' which means isolationism. Remember when America was isolationalist? Anyway, I remembered the word 'minshushugi' or 'democracy' that was in a previous lesson and wondered if it was the same 'shugi' being used in both. So upon further googling I found out that 'shugi' is an ending that sort of means what 'ism' means in English and that all sorts of political words like communism and socialism and capitalism all end in shugi. And now the words koritsu, koritsushugi, and minshushugi as well as shugi are forever stuck in my head.
In today's lesson, so far I have looked up outlet (hakeguchi) and precedent (senrei). While looking up 'hakeguchi' I found out that it both applies to a place where a river runs into an ocean as well as anything that vents like a teapot's steam hole. Also, it applies to anything that provides a person or a culture a way to release their emotions. So you could say that painting is your hakeguchi for when you feel sad. I found an interesting article about the current trend in Japan for some quasi intellectuals and professors to deny any war crimes like the rape of Nanking. Here is a quote from the article that uses the word hakeguchi: "the illusion-school faction is a hakeguchi -- an outlet for frustrations in Japan after years of what are seen as inflated claims about Japanese war crimes." Here is a larger quote from the article:
"Harsher critics of the illusion school say its members do not belong in any serious scholarly discussion. "These academics are not interested in a debate," says Mr. Nakano, of Sophia University. "What they do is to smear and undermine existing research. They cast doubt rather than illuminate."
Mr. Nakano says that while the revisionists have helped popularize a once-taboo discussion, their pulp publications, with huge readerships, are "pushing the trained historians out of the public debate about war crimes." Unlike Germany, which criminalized the denial of gross crimes of genocide, in Japan, denials of well-documented atrocities have repeatedly come from leading politicians. Mr. Abe, the prime minister, recently sparked outrage in Asia and the United States when he said there was no evidence that Japan's wartime government or military had enslaved thousands of comfort women, despite overwhelming documentation and a 1993 admission by Tokyo that it had. Few universities have taken action against revisionist academics. Once tenured, professors are difficult to remove from Japanese faculties, which in any case are seldom openly confrontational."
Well, that is pretty interesting stuff isn't it. How could you forget the word hakeguchi after reading all that? By the way, it helps a lot when trying to memorize all of the vocabulary to make connections between words. For example, 'guchi' is the same as 'kuchi' which means mouth. So you aren't learning an entire new word. You just have to remember that things can go in mouths and out of them and an outlet is the mouth of a river where the water flows out.
I couldn't find anything too interesting about the word 'senrei' but I did find out that 'sen' is the same 'sen' as in 'sengetsu' or last month so when you see sen in a word, you know that sometimes (not always) it is telling you to look backwards in time. So i just memorize sen as meaning before or past and I already know 'getsu' is month. Now I have three words or pieces of words for the price of one...'sen', 'sengetsu', and 'senrei'. And then after looking these words up on google and planting them in my head pretty well, I reinforce them by playing the games on My Japanese Coach. In a few months, I should have about 8000 Japanese words memorized. Once you get past lesson 100 in this game, it is pretty tough to force yourself to keep at it but you just have to make yourself do it.
January 2010: I am adding to my review again. I have now made it to lesson 252. I have found a misspelled English word and a couple misspelled Japanese words but I am not really too bothered about it. I think in about 10,000 words there would probably be a couple of mistakes. After progressing this far, I definitely recommend this game. My Japanese vocabulary is huge now and growing exponentially everyday. Also, it is no longer hard to get myself to do the lessons because it has become part of my daily routine. My goal is to make it to lesson 1000. This game might be the best $29 I ever spent. I think people who think this game is no good probably don't have the work ethic or determination to ever really become fluent in Japanese. I think the mistakes I have found in this game are relatively minor compared to how much I have learned. I can't wait to visit Japan with a 10,000 word vocabulary.
February 2010: Now I am on lesson 297 and updating my review. At this point I feel pretty comfortable with Japanese vocabulary but my vocabulary is superior to my grammar because that is what you mainly learn with MJC as you progress in the game. I should note that I am finding My Japanese Coach is not a very effective way to learn kanji. At a later date, I will buy something else for this (maybe Kanji Odyssey by Coscom). But I do like My Japanese Coach for learning vocabulary but with the caveat that it must be reinforced with dorama or movies or other authentic materials or conversation. I had thought that I would stop using My Japanese Coach for a while and focus on grammar for awhile. But instead I am using both MJC and the book I bought on Japanese particles (one of my other reviews).
April 2010: I just did lesson 313...twice. Apparently, there is a numbering mistake in the game so there are two lesson's numbered 313. I guess if you finish all of the game then you will have done 1001 lessons rather than 1000. I'm kind of starting to wonder if anyone besides me has ever gotten this far in the game. I feel so alone. If anyone else has--please let me know that somewhere on the planet someone else has done it.
July 2010: I went on vacation and needed something boring to do while traveling that would not require much work. And it would allow me to review all the previous words I learned. So I restarted MJC under a new name from lesson one. When I started it before, I was beginning as a false beginner who had forgotten most of my Japanese. This time I was starting as a pre-intermediate. Doing the game from this perspective, I have to say that starting from lesson one is really tedious. So intermediate or higher learners will definitely want to find the cheat code online and skip ahead as much as they can. But I still think the game is worthwhile at those levels because of the chance to be introduced to a lot of vocabulary that is in lessons 101-1000.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A Very Helpful Tool, March 23, 2009
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
Hello,
It seems that most who have written reviews here generally wrote them after completing only a handful of lessons. Since I'm currently up to lesson 70 after about two months of playing the game about 40 minutes a day, I think my observations may be helpful for those trying to figure out exactly how the program evolves as it introduces more complicated kanji and grammar.
Let me give a bit of background about myself first so that you can better guage where I'm coming from. I'm already fairly conversant (though not fluent) in Korean from studying it during college and have previously studied Japanese on-and-off a bit here and there in the last year. Since Korean shares extremely similar grammar with Japanese, along with many Chinese loan words and concepts, learning Japanese has come fairly quickly to me. In fact, the biggest obstacle for me in learning Japanese has been the fact that my work schedule (50-60 hours per week for a large law firm) made it difficult for me to establish an effective, independent study routine.
And that's where this game came to the rescue. To a subway commuter, this thing is an absolute godsend. While it is impractical to try and work through a textbook on a subway (at least here in NYC), this game allows me to pass my commute with a variety of different drills that really let me absorb and internalize the vocab. As people have said, this program is inadequate as a sole source of study material; however, it has certainly filled a very important niche for me.
To expand on the above, here is a quick run down of pros and cons as I've observed them:
Pros:
-Vocabulary is generally presented in fairly sensible, interrelated chunks.
-The combination of games that all stimulate your memory in different ways -- in particular, flash cards, write cards, hit-a-word, and yomi -- are all extremely useful in drilling the words into your head. I find that my active recall of many of these words is lacking; however, my passive recall is phenomenal.
-The kanji, one of my personal weak points during previous attempts at learning Japanese, is also well-organized and presented at a reasonable pace.
-The grammar sections are refreshingly well thought-out and the majority of the topics covered are supplemented by sufficient examples and lesson-specific games.
-The dictionary function is very useful as well, though I wish it would let you practice writing any word you selected.
Cons (this is surprisingly long, especially given my 5 star rating, I know; however, there are some annoying quirks to the game that may frustrate those who are not using it primarily to reinforce vocabulary):
-The biggest drawback for me is that the game does not constantly test you on all the vocabulary you've learned, even if you try to play the game with only the "mastered" option selected; instead, the game will only test you on material from the previous 8-10 lessons or so. As you progress in the game, this means that the only way for you to review everything you've learned so far is to go back to each lesson individually -- a tedious process which involves paging through the lesson to the end and playing the two lesson-specific games. This limits your review in two very annoying ways: 1) you will be unable to continually train older vocab in all of the 12 different games; 2) you will only be able to train older vocab against other older vocab in the same lesson. The second point is probably the most disingenuous and counterproductive because it lets your brain "recall the lesson" rather than internalize the vocabulary itself. You may not know a word very well, but you can recognize quickly every time when you only have to select it repeatedly against the same nine other vocabulary words in the same two games. I've found this an obstacle to refreshing or re-memorizing the older vocabulary because it only teaches you to have a passive command of a word relative to others in the lesson.
-Another big drawback is that the non-lesson-specific grammar games are atrocious at higher levels. Instead of drawing on the passages used in the lesson-specific grammar games, the general grammar games seem to pull 3 to 4 sentences from some other, seriously-lacking source. These other practice sentences (use mostly in bridge builder, spelltastic, fill in the blank, and scrolls) are rarely helpful. For example, I recently had a grammar game where three our of four of the questions revolved around fairly banal sentences using the word "ikura", despite the fact that neither the word "ikura" nor the grammar employed in the sentences was at all relevant to anything I had studied in the past 15-20 lessons. This limitation relegates you again to going back to each lesson and playing the lesson-specific games for review.
-A smaller drawback that should be noted is that it does not teach you the competing Kanji pronunciations in terms of On and Kun; which, from what I understand, will make it more difficult to truly master the Kanji later.
-Finally, as many have noted, the game is blotched with a few tiny programming errors here and there. This can be anything from a mis-conjugation in a lesson to even having a game freeze up (only happened once) when it seemingly drew a vocabulary word for which there was no information. Given the scope of the game, these things are relatively minor.
Overall, the game has been a huge boon to my studying and I highly recommend it to those looking for a mildly entertaining way to drill vocabulary and reinforce grammar. I currently have a private Japanese lesson every weekend where I review the concepts and vocabulary introduced in the game (occasionally supplementing them with material from Japanese for Busy People) and have found that this game can provide a solid foundation for self-learning but only if you are willing to review the material with a native speaker to ensure you are understanding it correctly.
Hope that was helpful. Good luck to all in their studies.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
A great supplement to learning Japanese, October 21, 2008
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
I have been teaching myself Japanese for about 3 years now. I am now enrolled in a college course and I just received this game on the 16th of October.
I really like how this game reinforces what I am learning in class. The vocabulary is pretty much where I am in class (of course there are more words in class). I really like how the game assesses your knowledge before you start playing, so you can start at a place that is comfortable for you. But, you can always go back and review previous lessons.
The mini-games are fun and while some people don't care for whack-a-mole, I think it is quite challenging when you have to read the word in kana and then whack the correct word.
I am still in the process of unlocking games, but I think this is a great paperless way to supplement learning Japanese in the classroom.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
My Japanese Coach Review, June 10, 2009
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
My Japanese Coach is a great study tool for beginners and intermediate learners. I started studying japanese in college from the beginners levels to the intermediate level. I've read a great deal of comments about the game, I would like to say that My japanese Coach is simply a study tool/guide it is not meant for people to reach fluency but a simple tool to get beginners oriented with the japanese writing system, speach, and vocab. This game is not meant for people who've had 8 years or 6 years of training, know over 500 vocabulary, or is at an advanced level. So for those of you who are in this category i suggest you not buy it you should go to japan, you'll benefit more with a real world experience in order to enhance your skills rather than using a computer game. If you have such experience my question is why buy the game in the first place? but anyway this is a great tool, japanese is a hard language to learn but anyone can learn it with the right tools. I understand the frustration of all the romaji but the game is encouraging you to learn outside the game, don't expect this game to do all the work for you. Also i see a few issues with the stroke order but remember this is a program it's not 100% flawless thats why you should use textbooks on hirgana, katakana, and kanji for learning the correct stroke order. Trust me doing this will ensure you that you actually go practice the writing rather than just using the Ds game. Taking classes, hiring a tutor, joining a japanese club, or if you know some or can find some international japanese students to conversate with then those are all great tools to use as well along with the game. For intermediate level individuals this game should be more of a tool for retaining memory for the things you should already know. I gave this game 5 stars because out of all the other programs i've used My Japanese Coach teaches GRAMMAR!!! a great deal of other programs do not, they simply focus on memorization. I love that it includes grammar. It's the best tool i've ever used, it's worth the money especially if your serious about learning japanese. Ganbatte!!!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Great learning tool, October 21, 2008
Fun:
This review is from: My Japanese Coach (Video Game)
Starter, I have next to none Japanese experience, the only phrases I know are the very basic. After trying out the other My *** Coach from Ubisoft and enjoyed them, I am excited to purchase the new installment on Japanese. So far I'm really impressed with the language programs by Ubisoft and My Japanese Coach is no exception. The best feature would be the ability to record yourself and compare to native speaker, this is especially important IMO when learning a language. The DS format gives you a very casual feel which makes learning fun and easy. It's obvious that one would not be able to master a foreign language from just one DS game, but My Japanese Coach will definitely teach you plenty of words and phrases that will get you by some basic conversations.
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