Topic: Should I buy a Japanese 3DS to learn Japanese?

I decided it be cool to know some Japanese. At least how to read it. Is it a good idea?

Buy a book, or Rosetta stone. amazon.com

Well yeah, but I want the new 3DS asap, would it be that hard to learn the basics from playing with one.

Just get a regular 3ds or wait for the new one to come out, and get yourself a book or a tutor. Once you have a basic knowledge of japanese then get one(for region locked content).

Don't. I got the Japanese version of Heart Gold, played through it several times, and I still don't understand a single word of Japanese.

I'm trying to learn some Japanese too but I would wait until the basics (hiragana, kanji, grammar) are pinned down before investing in a Japanese 3DS. Even then, it'd be probably be better to start off with games with minimal text and work your way up.

I'm using this book: Japanese Katakana and Hiragana for Beginners and there's also some good free apps you can find for your phone. I also plan on getting the Genki textbooks when I have the time and money.

And thanks for all the info @Turnip-Forest , I'll definitely check them out.

Thank you all for your opinions l. I take them into account

I was thinking about the same thing but I have already memorized the hiragana and katakana.

You could import a few ds games since they aren't region locked. I bought Pokemon Platinum and I've learned a few new words from it but I am really using it to keep up on my hiragana and katakana.

@Turnip-Forest Do you have to get the Kindle to do that? Or will I be able to use Kindle apps on my phone?

Yep, you can do that. Amazon has an info page on it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/kcp-landing-page?ie=U....

Yeah, just quit your job/drop out of school and move to Japan, no biggie. >_>

Definitely. I mean, 3 years of French classes are totally useless to me now because I never immersed myself in the language. But I think it depends on what the purpose of learning Japanese is. If you just want to read manga and play imported games, you can probably do well enough to self-teach the alphabet, grammar rules, etc and pick up the vocab along the way. I know plenty of people who have learned "good enough" English by playing MMOs on American servers. But if you're actually looking to be fluent in the language to be able to have real life applications, then yeah, immersion all the way.

I've been learning Japanese and I find learning the grammar to be most important...
Vocabulary is less important because you can just look that up as needed, and you'll understand the sentence if you know the grammar well enough.

@CaviarMeths Thanks! I do that when I can.

Also when it comes to immersion, it can be helpful or it can backlash. I went to Germany for an internship and to work on my German. The problem was as soon as people found out I was American, the Germans wanted to speak English with me. It drove me nuts.

Well, I can totally understand your reasoning! I did it myself, bought a Japanese 3DS in April. Haven't regretted it since! I wouldn't say though that it makes you learn Japanese though. Like the others on the tread already wrote, it's very difficult and maybe there are better ways. But I did find that playing Japanese games can be done, and it's a lot of fun following the Japanese releases.

Some games are easier then others. Yokai watch for instance leads you through the game pretty well, and with some online help I've almost finished the first game. I'm now playing the 4th sequel to Magicians Quest ( the first one was released here 5 years ago) and it's slow going. Translating with Google Translate, documenting the menus. But still, fun!

It would help you maybe if japanese used the same alphabet and sounds as english.

But it doesn't, so chances are you'll actually learn little to nothing from forcing yourself to play games in japanese without any kind of context or base.

Also there is no online translater to see what somebody is saying since we don't have japanese keys (or know how to write the word combinations in the first place) unlike other languages (bar chinese)

If you are using an iPad or iPhone, like I do, you can add the keyboard for Japanese, using the Katakana and Hiragana signs. And Google Translator works pretty well, not always perfect, but it's helped me a lot. I look at the signs in the game, type the signs while in my mind I rehearse the letters in our alfabet, and Google translate tells me what I need to know. And still, like I wrote earlier, I'm having fun with it. Plus I've learned much more about Japanese then I knew 5 months ago. Though it's only a tiny bit!

I'm going to Japan in December and the only phrases I have bothered memorizing are わたしは、あなたを愛しています and どのくらい？

I'm actually going to look into that myself.. Sounds interesting.

I do know one person from china who moved here.. and she has this translater on her phone where she draws the text with her finger and it translates to english for us to read (after a couple attempts as it isn't perfect) but then again not everybody has that option I'd imagine.

Why don't you attend to japanese classes first? They'll surely work.

@Beetlejuice I'm sure you want to memorize this: "トイレはどこですか".

go buy a Japanese book if you wanna learn Japanese