Language Learning

Started playing the new Pokemon game in Japanese. I think this series is really good for language - it asks what language you want up-front regardless of game region or system settings, kids are the main audience, it's full of concepts I've been exposed to all my life, most dialogue is taken at your own pace, there's furigana most places. There is a story I want to follow, and plenty of text to read, but most of it's not that important so I don't mind if some goes over my head.

This particular game, the battles aren't turn-based, and a few cutscenes are real time text instead of push to continue (and weirdly even in those no voice-over.) I also think you're locked in after you pick language? And if so, not sure why. Still, a good low-stakes game to immerse with.

It's been a little dialogue heavy at the start, should be less exposition once I get into it. For now I'm looking up a lot, but I think I'll lose patience for that pretty quick.

I can usually get the gist of what they say, which is exciting. I'm at the point where most of each sentence is intelligible, but the most important couple of words will be new to me. Between the context and the Kanji used, not too hard to hazard a guess at the new ones. Those i+1ish sentences are exactly what you want for learning.