Reached the last area that I was scared of in the game, and the last major area of the game: 極北のカムイ, which I knew was going to take a lot of inspiration and names from アイヌ伝承.
I have been using https://ainugo.nam.go.jp/ to look things up, although nothing so far has been like super necessary for understanding what to do, it’s nice to get a lil bit of context even if it’s slowing down the progression speed a lot. Ainu is written with a variation of katakana script, so it’s pretty easy to pick out the words of interest
Wow, that screenshot is amazing. I feel like if I got that far I’d simply give up, haha; really shows how much of a journey the English translator(s) had in localizing this game as well.
I was just talking to someone about this the other day, this is the kinda game you expect to get a loving and meticulous fan translation like 10 years after its release, not a full official localization in multiple languages within a few months of its release in japan. There’s just so much happening in this game to try to localize (or ignore)
I was talking about the 松竹梅 thing with them. They played in english recently, and they mentioned that in the english version it doesn’t use these at all! They replaced the entire grade system with stages of a sapling growing in all the international versions of the game.
It definitely is making me see the game with fresh eyes though, there’s so much here to really sink your teeth in to that I either glossed over or was simply not included in the english version. Pretty much any time I open the game I find new things to appreciate about it
That being said, after going back and forth between it and 狼と香辛料 the last few days, if spice and wolf is a pretty well established natively level 36 then this is… harder… like a lot harder, since that was the initial grade proposed by the only other person who mentioned playing it in the video game grade thread
I was gonna say, I’m not even playing the game and feel like from nothing but the three screenshots you’ve posted I feel like this is easily L40+, no problem.
It’s been kind of hard for me to think about grading this, since so much of the stuff I’m stopping for you could just skim over and still be able to play the game. Even with as much as I’m stopping to pick up background info, there’s still some sections that I hit and just look up a few keywords to get a fuzzy understanding, think “ok, not important right now” and move on.
And the whole game isn’t like these screenshots, at least once I kinda learned how イッスン speaks (your main companion and stand-in for your character in conversations, since you are a wolf and cannot talk) and a lot of the common essential words for the game mechanics (take a shot every time you see 蘇る), there are some whole sections that I can fly through.
But if you’re treating this as a close study thing and trying to wring as much possible out of every line, then the sheer breadth of language use makes me feel like you’re gonna get hung up on at least a few things here and there, no matter your reading experience
Even after I beat the game this time, I still feel like there’s a whole treasure trove of stuff to learn from that I just was not at the right level to work through right now, and I’ll have to come back in a few years to try again.
It does give me some more confidence picking up some harder books though
I think almost 6 hours of gameplay, and I have reached the final final boss at ~35.5 hours. Saving the final fight for tomorrow because I know the final boss + warm up itself is like an hour of fighting, and also I know there’s like a lot of lore reading that happens in and around that, so I’m probably still a couple hours from actually finishing the game
The ainu stuff ended up being almost entirely people and place names, and there weren’t actually a lot of them to learn, so that part wasn’t too much of a challenge other than just trying to remember who was who
Once I cross this bridge into the final area, there’s no turning back, so I made an extra save file outside just in case. I actually changed my play style a little bit after I realized that I missed one of the enemies in an area I cannot return to for an achievement and started playing less for completion stuff knowing that I’d have to come back for it anyway, so my play speed went up quite a bit.
My original estimate was 50-60 hours counting completion stuff, I dropped that to about 40 when I decided to skip achievement grinding, and it looks like I might come in a lil under that when all is said and done.
It’s done! 38 hours, I decided to not do any of the achievement stuff but leave my file before the final area just in case I want to go back and grind those without needing to play through the entire game for most of them again.
Still one of my favorite games of all time, and one that I have no doubt I will come back to in a few years and get to experience again. I also have no doubt that when I come back to play it again my japanese will have improved even more, and I’ll be able to get even more out of it!
On the anki side, it looks like I made about 800 new cards in the time I was playing okami, minus some random other words from short reads of other things, so probably around 700 total. That’s not counting a lot of the words I obviously learned without making cards for them, so I’d guess playing through this game let me learn north of a thousand new words. At this stage of my learning japanese, that is an insane amount of new material to get exposed to, and I had a great time doing it.
I would absolutely recommend this game as both a learning tool and as just a generally great game; it’s just got so much heart. Even though I could feel my brain turning to goo sometimes when I was trying to read things, I never felt discouraged by it and kept wanting to keep playing despite the language difficulties.
Rating wise, I feel comfortable now that all is said and done in saying that it’s at least L40, although I lack a frame of reference to grade any higher than that. If my estimated vocabulary was about 12k words and this constituted adding an additional 8% to that, that’s frankly a huge step up from whatever I’ve worked on before. This also the longest single project I’ve ever completed in japanese, taking easily over 45 hours between the game, the background research, and doing flashcards specifically for the game.
I am glad that I came back to this game when I did, and like I said yesterday I have a lot more confidence going forward in my ability to play and read things that I thought would be too challenging. Not sure what’s next on the docket, but I think at least a few weeks of easier stuff is in order
In the past few days as I’ve been relaxing with easier stuff a little bit, I’ve still been seeing some weird random bits of okami poke its head out places
This exchange from 侵略！イカ娘４ contains 3 words that I learned from okami, 仕業, 使者, and 操る, and then I also ran into an ああ with the ateji 嗚嗚 (although the card I made from okami is 嗚呼, it’s ateji so was still recognizable to me) last night in something else
This is making me think that my selection for words to make flashcards for was actually pretty good! I haven’t really run into any words that I looked up in okami but decided not to make cards for, and I’m running into a surprising number of the words that I did make cards for, which was really my goal. I wanted to reinforce words that were both common in okami and would have some applicability for reading outside that, and so far that has been the case in pretty much everything I’ve touched this week!
Read quite a bit more (for me) of 狼と香辛料 1 | L36 , up to about 7% of volume one done. Have mostly only touched this when I’m actually kinda tired already, and still am mostly finding it not too bad. With a dedicated week or two I could definitely finish this.
I also did a very short test read for 烏に単は似合わない 八咫烏シリーズ 1 | L35 and got completely shut down Spice and wolf feels like I’m reading a book and occasionally running into a hard sentence that I need to stop and think about, this feels more like okami did where it’s just deciphering a puzzle and sometimes having to settle for only getting a hazy understanding. Maybe it gets easier after you get past the introduction… but man wow that was hard
Finished volume one of 少女終末旅行 finally, I kinda didn’t realize this series was so short (only 6 volumes) and also would be so quick to read. Varies a lot in difficulty, the early chapters legitimately felt like maybe L17/18, but the later ones get a lil thinkier and have more text. Enjoying it quite a bit.
Also read some of the first volume of the landlord x failgirl tenant yuri, it’s got a really weird premise but it’s kinda cute, idk. Firmly in the “it’s alright I guess” camp, but you do get some like contract type vocab if you want to “study” for n2 with yuri instead of SKM Also short, only 3 volumes, I might finish it if I have nothing else to read, but literally never in my life have I been short on manga to read
Wow, that sure is a blast from the pastでゲソ. I read that series (well, the first 10-ish volumes at least) more than 10 years ago. It’s one of the earlier series I could read in Japanese and I quite enjoyed it. I even got a small イカ娘 figure at the time
It’s super cute! I like it a lot, but it’s a series that I kinda have a hard time reading a lot of at once. Like I’ll finish a chapter and just feel satisfied with no desire to read much more. Because of that it’s kinda turned into my “oh i’m gonna be traveling, i’ll just take a volume of something with me” or my “oh it’s 2am and I need to read something before bed” series
@javerend Are you me??? You must be me from another timeline. ミオファ, Learning Japanese from 大神, reading 狼と香辛料, 蟲師、hiker/climber/likes birds, yuri appreciator…
Seriously, reading your self introduction was like looking in a mirror!
Great job working your way through Okami, that game is no joke. You’ve given me the itch to replay it now that I’ve got a few more years of JP behind me, I’m sure there’s even more I’d be able to pick up on now.
In fact reading through this thread made me sad that I’ve been inactive here for the last month or two, so maybe this can be the motivation I need to share some more updates of my own soon
少女終末旅行 is one of the first series I read too! They’re not very text-dense, so it makes a great relaxing read before bed.
I can’t wait to hear more about your reading updates here!
There’s dozens of us japanese learner miofa! dozens!
Mio was one of the first japanese streamers I started watching, waaay back (2022 I wanna say) before I could even really read easy manga I really liked watching the 朝ミオおたより portion because I could look up the words on screen and it was divided into nice easily marked topic sections, and I’ve just kinda stuck with her since then. Been a great cornerstone of my japanese study for a long time, even as I’ve branched out into other hololive and other vtubers. So glad she’s back and healthy and motivated to do so much lately
Now that we’re far enough out I think I can say this, but that was actually one of my secret hopes with starting this log! Was really hoping that by doing some study log posting here I could both attract some wk members over and stir up a lil more activity and conversation here.
Same here, except for me it was all the way back in 2020! She kept popping up whenever I looked up things about the game 大神, and at the time her channel was suspended for copyright claims, but when she came back and I watched a few streams I really started to respect her. She’s almost the only Japanese streamer I actively follow.
注意：前世についての情報
Her old account on niconico, under a different name, has lots of let's play series including one of Okami! I watched these while her channel was blocked, and her personality and humor really shows through in them. It should be easy to find if you go looking or I could send you a link.
You’ve convinced me! I’ll post my own update in the main reading thread tonight. Replaying Okami might still have to wait a bit, but I always come back to it every few years so it’s only a matter of time now.
woah! I knew she had done gaming before hololive, but didn’t expect an extensive record of that anywhere! From so long ago too! I’ll have to watch through this okami playthrough at some point thank you!
I had just found an archive of a bunch of those missing vods from the copyright incident this week too, so I will be set on old mio content for quite a while
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