:: orochinagi

So I just found out that Ubisoft released this sometime last week:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001BZ8EX8

I've been giving it a shot, and if you own a DS and don't know any Japanese (but want to learn), it seems like a decent enough option to try. It teaches kana, basic grammatical constructs, vocabulary and (I think) kanji, through a combination of lessons and exercises.

However, if you already know some Japanese and basically want advanced lessons (which is what I was looking for), you may want to look for other options, because there isn't any way to skip the first set of basic lessons. I'm about 35 lessons in and it hasn't even started introducing kanji yet (whereas in my university course the professor introduced us to our first kanji after just a few classes).

Anyone else want to weigh in on this sort of stuff?

So this DS thing is actually valid then? I've zero Japanese language experience but have always wanted to learn - this might be a good starting point.

I'm curious about the Rosetta Stone software they advertise on TV. Has anyone ever used it and if so how was it?

I has it!

Amazingly Gamefaqs has a page for this thing, and there's a fairly scathing review of it here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/ds/review/R129230.html

On top of his points I'd like to add that the handwriting recognition is fairly inconsistent, in that it gets really picky about stroke order for certain characters but doesn't give a damn for other characters. On top of that if you write too fast sometimes it fails to read your input correctly.

Overall I think I'll be better off ditching it and picking up some good workbooks.

Persona wrote:I has it!

You have which? The DS thing or the Rosetta Stone thing??

Game.