If you are in the video game section of most stores you’ll see at least 1 of the My _____ Coach games for DS. They have SAT prep, other languages , a version to increase your vocabulary, and even a weightless coach.

IGN gives a release date of 10/14, and at 29.99 it seems like agood deal in comparison ot electronic disctionaries & all that.

Here’s some Key Points from Amazon:

Key Features

Explore Japan as each point of interest opens up your vocabulary

• Lesson plans take place within interesting locations ranging from Tokyo to the country side
• Useful information for first time Japanese speakers planning to visit the country
• The world map is identical to the Japanese map and the locations of the country

Learn to pronounce sounds unique to Japanese by comparing your voice to a native speaker

• Voice recording and playback feature of the DS allows the player to compare his or her accent to a native Japanese speaker
• Ability to listen and compare phrases not just words but also phrases as well

Develop your calligraphy skills as you trace over animations showing the proper way to write in Japanese

• Write Japanese characters using the DS stylus and touch screen
• Stroke order and comparison ability allows players to properly write hiragana / katakana / kanji

Participate in mini-games that will test your grasp of the structured lessons featured in the game

• 12 mini-games reinforce lesson plans and the ability to write in Japanese
• Variety of mini games ranging from whack-a-mole, word search, bridge builder, and kanji writing

Use the built in reference tool to look up useful words and phrases

• Japanese Dictionary and phrasebook with over 12,000 Japanese words and hundreds of useful phrases
• Strong reference points and serves as an independent tool from the game that’s very practical and useful

This won’t be the only resource you’ll need to learn Japanese, (like someone said on the gamestop site) but it’ll be a fun way to supplement the other tools you’re using now. This game won’t make you fluent in Japanese, but it’ll help for sure.

Now we can count from 1-20, 20-100, 100-1000 & 1000-10,000. This post will cover the 10-thousands.

I mentioned before that in Japanese there’s a separate unit for Ten-Thousands. It took me a bit to wrap my head around it.  Say we have a huge number like 98,765.
In English, we’d read it 98 thousand, 7 hundred, 60, 5.

In Japanese it’s essentially read like this: 9 Ten-Thousand, 8 Thousand, 7 Hundred, 60, 5.

To me, it’s really hard to think that there’s something else to put in there. It almost makes sense, because Japanese currency ￥ (Yen, or えん [en] in Japanese) is usually listed in much larger numbers than we’re used to with dollars.
￥100 is about $1.00 give or take.
If our big number above was  ￥98,765… it’d be $987.65 roughly.

1,000.	sen	せん
10,000.	ichiman*	いちまん
20,000.	niman	にまん
30,000.	sanman	さんまん
40,000.	yonman~	よんまん
50,000.	goman	ごまん
60,000.	rokuman	ろくまん
70,000.	nanaman~	ななまん
80,000.	hachiman	はちまん
90,000.	kyuuman	きゅうまん

Using this new list, lets look at the big number again, & break it down:

90,000	kyuuman
8,000	hassen
700	nanahyaku
60	rokujuu
5	go

So all together 98,765 would be read:
きゅうまん はっせん ななひゃく ろくじゅう ご
kyuuman hassen nanahyaku rokujuu go

It’s alot to take in, but I found for myself that breaking it down helps.