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.

I learned a nifty phrase today, which ‘ve heard many times (watching anime lol)  and finally know what it means.

がんばって ください - Please try your best
ganbatte kudasai

In finding this out I’ve found that ganba がんば is “go for it” or “keep at it”

I just need to keep telling myself this & everyone else trying to learn Japanese.
がんばって ください!!

Over the last bunch of posts, there’s been lots of numbers!(1-20, 20-100, 100-1000!)  And this one will be no exception, hehe. Now We’ll be doing 1,000-10,000!

I’m pretty sure the next will be the last *strictly* numbers post for a while. We’ll get to time & age soon.

Like with the rest if the Japanese numbers there’s a system. With the exception of 1000 (which is せん [sen] all by itself,)  you take the number & stick せん (sen) to the end of it. 2000 is にせん (nisen), and 5000 is ごせん (gosen). And also like the others, there are irregulars. Keep an eye out for 3000 さんびゃく (sanzen) & 8000 はっぴゃく (hassen)

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I’m really hoping that these 日本語 Japanese posts are helping people. The reason I keep doing them is two-fold: 1) I get to share something that I know & I think others would like to know as well.  2) It’ s a killer review for me as well. I keep doing posts & setting them to auto post day after day. I have a few finished everyday & I keep adding more. Just gotta pace myself.

So today we had our midterm. It was tricky, but I think I did well. We has to write some single words in Hiragana, which made me think. It’s kinda hard. >.<  Further on in the test, there were questions that had to be answered in Hiragana. Oy!

So overall, tricky, but not too bad.

So far we’ve covered from 1-20 and 20-100.

Now we’re going to do 100-1000.

It may seem like a big jump, but it’s not nearly as taxing as it seems.

In English, we have names for the units. By units I mean ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.

In Japanese, they have all those but, there’s also a unit for 10-thousands.
It’ll make more sense when you see it, but that’ll be in a later post.

Below are the “hundreds” units, including 1,000 .

** These are irregular and don’t follow the  “___hyaku” pattern.
~~ Also not that these use yon & nana as the prefixes.
shihyaku & shichihyaku would be incorrect.

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The HKO Founder’s beta opens today, at 10pm EST.

For anyone that also got in, I’ll most likely be Arcsis in game, so feel free to say hi!

The game is available for download via bit torrent, which is a program that lets you download bits of it from other people. It’s less taxing on the servers to do it this way instead of a traditional download. With a file that’s as big as this (1.85 gbs!) a normal download is insane. This makes it crucial that people seed (the BT term for sharing)

So please, Please, PLEASE seed!

Leave bit torrent & your computer on for as long as you can to let others download it too.

HKO reccommends using utorrent (which is what I use)

If this thing even finishes, I’ll see you all in game!

HKO Site   |   HKO Blog

Last time we covered 1 - 20, & today we’ll go all the way to 100! The nice part is that counting 20-30, 30-40 etc, uses the same pattern as 10-20.
10 + 1 = 11
juu + ichi = juuichi

2 * 10 = 20
ni * juu = nijuu
20 + 1 = 21
nijuu + ichi = nijuuichi

** I mentioned before that sometimes you need to use certain pronunciations for certain things. This is one of those times
It would be incorrect to say “shijuu” for 40, or “shichijuu” for 70. I’m not sure why that is, but it is

This lesson will cover すうじ (suuji- numbers) 1-20. There are Kanji for each number, but that will be covered later.
Eventually I’ll do bigger numbers up to 10,000 & じかん (jikan- time). But today, we’ll start small.
1 -10 is pretty straight forward, and very important. It’s the base for all the rest of the numbers, as we’ll see later.

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I got Chocobo Tales last weekend & let me tell you, It’s wicked fun! I’ve always loved the Final Fantasy Chocobos, and this game serves `em up with extra helpings of kawaii.

I’ve read several reviews that said that square-enix did some research & found that younger players liked chocobo the best of all the FF characters. So they made this Chocobo game for that target audience. If you’re not in that age group, never fear this is still a hugely entertaining game for anyone, especially if you’re a fan of the FF series.

Basically, it’s a full game of minigames. (And microgames!)

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