I’m curious what level would be optimal for playing it, without it taking 1 hour to get through a single dialog. I’m currently at a very beginner level (only a few chapters through げんき1). I really want to get to a level where I can start to use and learn the language outside of an educational environment. I’m of course looking at different things, but I do wonder how far off Pokemon would be in this regard.
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For the gameboy advance ones all you need is a basic grasp of hiragana/katakana and a japanese to english dictionary app. I started playing it immediately when I was just beginning in Japanese. Using it as a means to study the language, I had a notebook and my dictionary handy and I just started writing down the dialogue and translating it (writing the translations in small lettering above the dialogue).
Immediately you’ll pick up on words that repeat and eventually you’ll stop referring to the dictionary because you already know them from the repeated exposure. It was a lot of fun.
Just going to echo what was already mentioned but you can start playing the games as soon as you can read hiragana and katakana. But because you mentioned that you don’t want to “take an hour to get through one dialogue” I feel like you need to know that it will take at first a little longer. There are words that you won’t be familiar with even if you played the games in your native language/English already. And even if you have a little bit more proficiency, let’s say you’d start after you finish genki 2, it would still take a little because you might not be that used to reading in Japanese or genre specific words appear. That’s why I’m just going to say that you should play right away. You’ll get faster as soon as you’re used to reading and know more genre specific words.
I recently started enjoying playing Pokemon Let’s Go so I’ll share my experience.
As other comments suggest, I tried playing Pokemon with kana a few months ago and it was an awful experience. Using a dictionary to look up words on each sentence took way too much time and just broke the game immersion. Keep in mind this “kana only option” is aimed at kids that don’t know many kanjis yet but are fluent (on a kid level) in oral Japanese.
I stopped after about a week and decided it would be better to invest this time in traditional textbook study, so I pushed though Minna no Nihongo and some Anki decks to get close to N4 level.
3 weeks ago I watched [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOr_WSebOYg) from the ゲーム言語 channel and felt like I got a good grasp on the game dialog so I searched for a game script and found [this awesome resource](https://jo-mako-anki.github.io/webpages/resources/jrpg/pokemon-letsgo.html). I started playing Pokemon Let’s Go using the game script + [Yomichan](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yomichan/ogmnaimimemjmbakcfefmnahgdfhfami) in a browser window and it finally felt good. If I don’t know a word or a grammar point, I look it up using the game script in seconds. I don’t write it down or anything, I just try to remember it and if it’s important it tends to come up multiple times so it sticks. It works very well at my current level and although it’s probably not as efficient as textbook study, it’s enjoyable and feels like I get better after each session.
The only things that would make this better would be furigana in text and voiced acting for listening practice.
Hope it helps and huge thanks to the guy that made the scripts with screenshots available!
I would say arround N4 or early N3, I finished Judgment and Lost Judgment with that level and I was playing Persona 5 when I start learn japanese.
Illiterate toddlers can play it so technically any level is fine. But maybe try again after finishing genki 1
I’m going to go against the grain and recommend that you **don’t** play Pokemon in Japanese as a beginner. I played B2/W2 in Japanese, and it was the worst experience I’ve had with both Pokemon and Japanese video games.
The problems are (1) Pokemon has a lot of made-up words and specialized terminology and (2) many words are provided with little context. For the first point, this mainly relates to the Pokemon names. Do you already know the Pokemon in English? Now imagine learning them all again, in Japanese. Plus, Pokemon names will literally **never** be useful in practical Japanese. Then there’s also item names, place names, etc. For the second point, Pokemon just in general isn’t a very high-context game. Pokemon attack names are just presented as single words. Do you know off the top of your head what でんじは, ひのこ, and まきつく mean? You don’t just have to re-learn all the Pokemon names in Japanese, but also the moves as well, which are just provided as single words without context. A lot of dialogue is just random NPCs, which tends to be an isolated sentence or two, also not much context clues there.
I also don’t think a kana-only approach is that great. It does make it more accessible, but I think learning and getting used to kanji is much more important/helpful in the long run.
Make your own decision, maybe you will love Pokemon in Japanese and it’ll be fine for you. I’d personally recommend finding a game that tends to provide words in more context, and that has kanji with full furigana rather than all-kana.
i played after n3 and i felt fine halfway through the game. had no idea what pokémon enemy trainers were sending out next though.
I beat Pokémon Red with barely any vocab knowledge. Though I didn’t really attempt to look up anything I didn’t know so I beat the game in about 10 hours. It was great for strengthening my katakana which I had been shaky with until then.
Now I’m currently trying to play through Pokémon Legend of Arceus in Japanese and even after passing the N4 there’s so many words I have to look up. There’s been very few sentences so far where I already knew all the words.
I personally play a lot of games in Japanese of varying levels of difficulty. Personally the one I enjoyed the most was Hamtaro Hams Hams Unite. It’s a little confusing due to no kanji and also the made up ham ham language. But so far this game has been the best for learning Japanese while having fun. The words used are mostly beginner friendly and it’s a game with no combat so you can focus on just reading most of the time.
I bought Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX on the Switch as a present for myself for completing my N5, because it’s one of the few games where you can change the language in the settings rather than needing to change the language on the Switch into Japanese in its entirety. It would basically take me an entire evening to get through a dialogue and do a rescue. I enjoyed it but it was slow and then I got completely stuck on the game and couldn’t figure out how to revive my pokemon and ended up wiping my saved data to re-start it a year later. It was so much easier the second time around when I had finished the N4 material. It doesn’t have the same specialised vocabulary of some of the main pokemon games and it doesn’t matter if you can’t remember the names of the pokemon etc. It has full furigana as well so you’re not trying to decipher long strings of hiragana (although some pokemon speak entirely in Katakana but usually not conveying any important info). So yeah, basically at the end of Genki 1 if the satisfaction of playing in Japanese would outweigh the pain of clawing through it word by word, but hang on until you’ve completed Genki 2 if you want it to be fun.
In my experience video games aren’t enjoyable until at least N2/N1 because they use a lot of colloquialisms and casual grammar. Might not be as bad if you don’t care about understanding every line of text tho
Video games like Pokémon can be a bit weird due to all the made up names, words, attacks, etc.
Lots of good responses here but I would shoot for somewhere around N3 so you’re at least very familiar with all the main grammatical constructions, passive, causative, and some common contractions and slang constructions. I wouldn’t really worry about vocab though, due to the issues I mentioned above. I think I had N1 when I first played pokemon, and there were still plenty of words I had never seen before (just think about some of the weirder attack names in Pokémon), but the vocab will be easy enough to pick up with context.
Depends on the game and the experience you’re going for.
Playing any of the newer games in kanji mode without an ungodly amount of dictionary look-ups requires you to be decently proficient at reading (in JLPT terms N2-N1 level). Playing any of the older games while freely referencing a dictionary only requires a solid foundation in grammar (in JLPT terms N4-N3 level).
Once you finish Genki II you’ll be in a decent place to do stuff like that. Don’t get me wrong, you will constantly be looking stuff up because native material is a huge step up in difficulty. But you’ll be seeing a ton of sentences where you just don’t know one word or don’t know one grammar point, so you look that word up or look that grammar point up and now you understand the sentence. You play something like Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu right now and you’ll be running across mostly sentences where you don’t know 5 words and don’t know the grammar of the sentence either and it’ll be like reading the dictionary.
At least an N1, though a PhD in Japanese is recommended. Says so right on the box
But seriously, even if you are at about an N5/N4 level you’re going to encounter a lot of game specific junk words that you’re going to have to look up. Even seasoned Japanese readers will find some head scratchers, even if they can phonetically sound them out in hiragana
There’s a lot of translations, anki decks, and script companions for popular games online but I find it annoying to play 20% and spend the rest of the time stopping and translating
Pokemon is written by and for Japanese people. There are things that are easier for beginners, but basically anything that is native content is always going to exist “beyond N1 level”.
I just finished Pokemon Legends Arceus and read through the Kanto arc of the Pokemon Adventures Manga. There’s a lot of super specific vocabulary— you’re learning about growing berries, using wavelengths to scan for Pokemon, training, fighting, exploring different kinds of places, biomes and towns, each Pokemon has its own little Pokedex entry and there’s usually a sign describing every major area, there’s different groups of people who talk to you about their ideologies and agendas. I know the game had some new vocabulary for me here and there but as someone who just took N1 this July and sat through the whole Nihongo no Mori N1 playlist, I can tell you that the manga at least had literally at least one N1 grammar point *per chapter*.
That said, I would recommend you get into native materials as soon as you can stomach it and start looking up/making flashcards for the words you don’t know. One of the benefits of children’s content like Pokemon or shonen anime is that because it’s so wild and fantastical, and the setting and topic can change so drastically it usually covers a very broad range of vocabulary across different topics but never gets so deep that a child wouldn’t be able to understand it, so it helps you develop a well-rounded vocabulary.
If you’re, like, moving to Japan in 18 months and need to be fluent in specifically everyday Japanese as fast as possible, I would instead recommend you play something like Ace Attorney or Summer Pockets, as well as reading something like よつばと, because those skew a bit more realistic and have fewer words that are just made up or only used in fantasy/sci-fi settings. But Pokemon is set in a realistic-enough world that the setting isn’t thaaaaaat much of an issue.
If you do end up playing Pokémon in Japanese, use this: https://pokejisho.com/en/jisho/
Just type in any Pokémon name/move/item/etc. in either language and get the translation instantly.
For learning about how the Pokémon were named, use Bulbapedia and Ctrl+F “other languages” to jump to a section explaining the reason behind the Japanese name. (This makes the names more fun/memorable, and you can learn/reinforce some vocabulary at the same time)
Example: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Suicune_(Pokémon)#In_other_languages
> スイクン Suicune ｜ From 水 *sui*, 水晶 *suishō*, and 君 *kun*
Native content is always a mix of all proficiency levels because those levels are made for NON-native speakers who are trying to learn the language, hence, they structure pieces of grammar separated in regards of abstraction.
pokemon can have grammar and vocabulary from N5, N3 and even N1in the same dialogue. But pokemon is targeted for kids so they won’t use academic jargon or a very difficult storytelling. however YOU as a non native speaker will find difficult this mix of all levels in a few sentences.
So personally, if you dont have at least a N3 level don’t try native media. you can use them to practice your reading or learn new vocabulary, but I think that’s a rough way to do it becaise you will always be looking up like 5 new words per dialogue and you will get sick of it really quick at the point that you won’t enjoy playing the game anymore.
but if you want to challenge yourself learning this way go ahead and try it bro!
You can do anything with passion and patience. The times where I’ve most improved is when I jumped into something that was too difficult for me, yet I was able to push through(with the mighty help of a dictionary)because I loved what I was doing.
What a monumental waste of time.