Recently I have been trying to start studying Japanese with video games again. Some would say I lack discipline, but I find studying with textbooks extremely boring. 6 or 7 years ago I started a YouTube series where I used cutscenes in video games to practice Japanese. I did one for the Witcher in Monster Hunter World, another I forgot about for Doraemon: Story of Seasons and another for Sekiro, then I got distracted and never continued, until today! I spent the last few days searching for video games with Japanese at or just above my level, and after trying Dynasty Warriors Origins and a couple others that were either too advanced or did not provide relevant vocabulary, I tried Monster Hunter Stories 3, at least the demo, and it was perfect! So here is the result of me hyperfocusing on a part of the intro for 12 hours and then spending another 12 hours writing this script and editing this video. You can access the vocabulary list here.
12 hours on the intro! That’s dedication man. Let me know if you wanna get some wizard level techniques to speed things up. I think I made the offer a while back. What was the ultimate breakthrough for me was learning the 2,136 jouyou Kanji (quickly). It doesn’t create an immediate quantum leap, but everything changes once you are able to read most of what you see. What level would you say you are now? Can you comfortably read through game menus and those kind of things? Also, I find that learning with games can be fun, but they can also tend to use very literary language, archaic language or vocab that you wont’ really see around that much depending on the game. Either way, all roads lead to advancement. biggups