My Japanese Coach (Nintendo DS, 2008)

This is a really great product for anyone that has little to no knowledge of the Japanese language, and who would like to sort of "start from the ground up" so to speak. It has numerous mini-games to help you with learning your words, and the part I like most about this game is that you have to master all the words in your current lesson and previous lessons before you can go on to the next ones, so no skipping around and getting confused! This also ensures you learn things in the proper order.

One not so great feature is the opening placement test, to see how much Japanese you already know. Based on how well you do, you may skip a few of the beginning lessons (there are about 1000 lessons total). I skipped the first four lessons originally, but I deleted that game after completing only one lesson, and decided to fail the placement test on purpose in my new file so I would not skip a single lesson. Trust me you will want to do this as well unless you know a fair amount of Japanese vocab words. The problem here is it assumes, based on words you get right in the placement test, that you know other similar words, when you may not. It also then changes the status of the skipped lesson words to mastered, even if you have no idea what the words mean. An example being, I knew words like anime, manga, hello, a few random colors I guessed at, etc. and it bumped me ahead 4 lessons, but it also assumed I knew all the days of the week, a few numbers and others I didn't know at all. So do yourself a favor, if you are really set on learning everything you can from this game, and fail the placement test on purpose.

Other than that so far the game has been great. I have learned loads of things already and because you repeat the words so often and in so many different forms they really do get drilled into your head. Practicing things in real life is also fun and helps you learn as well.
There are numerous mini-games too, some more helpful for certain things than others, to help you master your words. Other features, in the lessons themselves, helped enormously in my understanding of the Japanese writing system, and these were things that I picked up on my own, they were not actual lessons (at least not in the beginning of the game).

There are numerous other features that can help you if you take the game traveling to Japan, which allows the game to dual as a portable Japanese phrase book and dictionary. These expansive and well organized features alone are worth the price of the game, and they are only a side feature!

The music does get repetitive after a while, but since you will only be doing one or two lessons a day it is not intolerable.

One important thing to mention is to make sure you do the lessons while you are alert and awake! Don't do them late at night when you are tired, and make sure you are getting plenty of sleep! Sleep is when you brain really works it's magic on things you learn throughout your day and if you don't get enough it won't matter how good of a program you are using to learn from, you won't be able to remember things.

And remember, real fluency in a language generally takes years of school study and practice, so don't expect to be able to fluently speak Japanese when you have completed this game. However, for being only a game, it will teach you a vast amount of things, and you will be well on your way to being fluent, especially if you use this game in conjunction with actual Japanese classes.

I give it a 4/5.

this is probably one of the best ways to learn japanese on your own. you can listen to the game correctly pronounce the words for you, it lets you record yourself speaking the phrases and words (the first time i've enjoyed using the microphone in a DS game) and compare your pronunciation to the game's speaker, it shows you how to write in hirigana, katakana and simple kanji, showing you stroke direction and order- you can practice writing with the stylus, and there are a bunch of memory games including flash cards, multiple choice, writing from memory, and a few others.
there are over 1000 lessons, and it will not let you pass on to the next lesson until you have mastered the 10 or so words, phrases or characters in that lesson, via repetition of games. words and phrases from previous lessons occasionally pop up in each lessons' tests to keep you from forgetting what you already learned.

it can save up to 3 profiles, so family members can share the game, you don't have to each own your own copy. when you first create a new profile, you take an aptitude test to see what level you can start at, so its good whether you're new to the language or intermediate. my husband and i have been taking turns on this, he started off new to the language and i studied 2 years of japanese in college, and its been beneficial to both of us.

my only complaints are that the writing portions are a little too sensitive (if you lighten the stylus' pressure on the screen during a stroke, it sees it as 2+ strokes and you get it wrong) and also so far (i'm at level 41) there's not as much verb conjugation and sentence structure as i'd like, mostly vocabulary, but perhaps farther on it will have more phrases. i might be able to say "863" now, but at the moment that's a little useless.

there are several other "my coach" languages that you can buy, including spanish, chinese and french. if they come out with polish or german i'm sure i'll be buying those as well. its said that the average person is capable of mastering 7 languages, and these DS games are probably the cheapest and fastest way to make that goal before you die :)

Within just a few days of owning this game, both my son and I are addicted to it, and his Japanese vocabulary has improved greatly. I had tried everything - other games, cds, flash cards, and he just wasn't showing interest. Putting it in such a simple format on the DS turned the trick for him, and now we have simple conversations and drills.

It makes learning incredibly easy, non-stressful, and amusing. You can just do a few minutes a day to take one lesson, or do more than one lesson if you're doing review. The ability to switch to comparing your speech, to comparing your handwriting, is wonderful. I have games from Japan which can do these things, but you have to already know how to read the Kanji to even get thru the menu, so this is much simpler. The games are cute, and there are unlockables for doing well in your lessons. You can repeat the older ones if you want - for example, if you're learning the romajii and speech first, you can still go back and memorize the reading and writing. Later on, the flash cards dissolve the kanji or kana, and you have to write it with proper brush stroke from memory, so it does offer some challenge, but it is best for beginners or those who need a fun way to review. I use this with another game primarily for study despite having all the flash cards, cds, and books that you could imagine.

Like a lot of people, I have an interest in all things Japanese. It's a disease some call otakudom. Whether it's the fashion, music, culture, games, food, or language, I love it. So when I found out that I could learn Japanese by playing a video game, I had to try it out.

So how well does it work? I've been playing maybe an hour or two a day for the past week, and already I have a 300 word vocabulary, I can read and write the hiragana and katakana alphabets, and I can make a pretty good range of basic sentences. and I've only just started, the game has a dictionary of thousands of words you can learn. I must admit, I had a bit of a head start, because I had already tried teaching myself a little of the language. The game does have a placement test in the beginning, which let me skip ahead to lesson 5. But if you're not an absolute beginner the early lessons may still be a bit boring. If you get through it though, with 1,000 lessons, There's probably something to learn for students of any level.

The game features 12 mini-games to practice your skills, plus you can use the built-in microphone to record your voice and compare with a native Japanese speaker. The touch screen on the DS also allows you to practice your calligraphy. For me My Japanese Coach for DS has made learning Japanese fun and easy. It won't replace having someone to speak and practice with, but for anyone wanting to learn, it's a great place to start. I highly recommend it.

Before i got this game i only knew how to say hello and goodbye in japanese. I think i also knew alittle about counting. But other than that i was an absolute begginer at the language. This game taught me all the fundamentals i needed to know to succeed in japanese. Without it i would not have been as sucessful as i am today. It taught me hiragana, katakana, and most of my vocabulary. Ofcourse you cannot use this game alone and expect to speak japanese like a native. In order to fully master the language you must immerse yourself in it because that is how humans learn a language including toddlers. By immersing.By that i mean speaking it (If you dont live in japan you can speak with natives online on sharedtalk.com i am not advertising, it just that i used this and it really was fun and helped me speak better), you can also immerse yourself by listening to japanese music, reading japanese books, and watching japanese dramas. If you immerse yourself while completing this game you WILL have to vocabulary and knowledge to speak fluent japanese. One thing that is kind of a flaw for this game, however, is the fact that it does not teach as much grammar as i would have liked. At first when i was using only this game i could understand pin point alot of words japanese people were saying but i couldnt understand because i didnt know the grammar. So make sure You have a separate way of learning grammar (genki 1, or the internet)and also another way to learn kanji because it only teaches like maybe 80. But on everything else it is good. It teaches ALOT of vocabulary. Enough to be fluent. But it teaches the wrong stroke order, i heard, for a few kana and kanji. The thing about that is as a forighner in japan i don`t think i am ever going to have to worry about stroke order because i`ll just be reading and typing it because my hand writing is terrible just in english already xD

Anyway, i definitely recommended you get this!!