Hello i was wondering if anyone knew of a service or anything where someone will walk me through the gameboy pokemon japanese games? This is my most motivated way of learning Japanese right now.
i am aware it is not kanji. i have basic katakana and hiragana knowledge
Is there a service anyone knows of where someone will walk me through the game as i play for like an hour a session? this way they can answer any and all my questions as they arise?
if not a service does anyone know where i can get this kind of help from like a webpage or book or something?
7 comments
Im not sure what kind of service it is youre looking for? Itd be a dictionary of some kind and maybe an app like deepl for picture translations…
im not sure if id reccomend pokemon though.. i started doing the same thing recently and after 4 hours i finally have my starter… its absolutely brutal not only being a beginner but it not having kanji.. i picked pokemon because it is a kids game and also it was ranked supposedly fairly easy on a difficulty chart, but idk about that… ive decided to go with something else for the time being personally…
When I first played through Pokemon games, the hardest thing was figuring out moves.
Go to Bulbapedia/pokemon wiki and look up the specific pokemon you have on your team, and look at their moveset FOR THAT GENERATION/GAME.
This was my lifesaver! I could look up vocab in the dictionary for the rest, but knowing what move my pokemon is trying to learn at level up is very helpful.
Otherwise, I’d also recommend you pick a game you have play before/know the story of! Or, as others have said, play a bit, then go back and watch someone else play the same thing, and do that back and forth.
Lastly, if you are playing this to learn, figure out what you want to get out of it. You don’t need to stick to this, but this has been very helpful to me.
For example, the first time I played through a game, I wanted to focus on just reading ability. Vocab, grammar, those were bonus things. I read everything out loud for reading practice. And I got so good at reading! Depending on your stage in learning, you can do this, you can look for x amount of new vocab, or something else.
Do have fun though! 😊
Have you considered hiring someone off of fiver?
Service?!
There’s a lot of resourceful sites you can find on the internet. Even Google translate can help you.
What I do while playing a game in Japanese (in my case, jrpgs) is this:
1. I will find an English walkthrough of said game.
2. Then I’ll find a Japanese walkthrough (I would recommend [this site](https://game8.jp/), cause they use a lot of images),
3. and a dictionary for any word I don’t understand/can’t read the kanji (I suggest this [kanji site](https://kanji.sljfaq.org/draw.html), since you can search handwritten kanjis)
While playing said game, I would follow my progress with the Japanese walkthrough. If I get lost or have no idea where to go next, I would jump to the English one and find myself (having separated tabs with only translated lists, like items, moves and locations names helps a lot)
tl;dr
NOW!!! being a Pokemon game, I believe just using the [Bulbapedia](https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_by_National_Pok%C3%A9dex_number) would help you A LOT.
Then I would add an script/dialogue transcription of the game (sometimes you can find them in the “good and old” [Gamefaqs](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/).
Besides that, just have fun!!!
There’s not that much dialogue in them, why don’t you just write it all out as you go, or take screenshots, and then look up all the words? You can even make flashcards with it. Otherwise if you want someone to do this you would certainly have to pay them.
I don’t know of a service or anything… perhaps if you have a tutor from italky or a similar app/website, you could ask them if they’re willing to use Pokémon games as learning material.
Otherwise I’d recommend the YouTube Channels Game Grammar and Game Gengo. They both have videos on playing Pokémon games respectively, Game Grammar got a series on LeafGreen and Sun, and Game Gengo has some more introductory videos for the newer Switch releases (“First hour of…”, Essential Vocabulary) as well as a “Should you learn Japanese with Pokémon?” where they go over all the pros and cons of using the games to learn Japanese with.
You can get a lot of mileage out of these videos, as the Pokémon games are very similar, and you learn a lot of language that’s applicable across the whole series.
Assuming that, with “gameboy pokemon”, you mean some of the older titles like Red/Blue/Yellow, I’d recommend the LeafGreen Lets Play (Game Grammar), and the Let’s Go Videos (Game Gengo), since they’re remakes of the first generation, so there’s even more overlap.
Generally though, I’d advise looking into games from Gen 5 onward, as they have Kanji mode, and it’s actually harder to play in Kana-only, since it can be difficult to tell with the homophones in Japanese, which word they actually mean. Also the newer games are much more readable thanks to the higher resolution. You can always switch between Kanji and Kana Mode in the options.
The Switch is actually the best system to learn languages with, as it makes it very easy to change the language of your system, and games will just change their language accordingly if there’s a Japanese version available.
Personally, I’d also recommend reducing your expectations for your first few times playing the game. You don’t need to understand everything to play the game – it can even be a fun challenge to just try to get through the game and only really try to understand the Japanese in the Pokedex Entries of the Pokemon you catch at first. I think this gives you a rather nice balance of gameplay vs learning, as trying to read and understand it all at once can be quite daunting in the beginning. Later, it can be nice to come back and see how far you’ve come and improved, by seeing how much better you understand the game then. 🙂
The most important thing: Have Fun! 🙂
Maybe something like one of these would help:
https://youtu.be/-stbdKehONw
https://youtu.be/mOr_WSebOYg