久しぶりだな

We return!

How were the photos? Mediocre weren't they. Well, if you're bored I now have a secondary Tumblr set up purely for my shoddy 'experimental' photographs. How fun! It can be found at

https://jamoameshashin.tumblr.com/

Anyway, advertising out the way. Let's pick up where we left off previously. We will again be looking at 今川の装備menu. I believe there were only two things remaining to cover. One huge description and a tiny block of kanji. So then.

Le'ts get the troublesome things out the way first

As always we will start with the cheeky katakana. We have the title at the top first so let's whirl. 

First we have Ranya - Launcher. That's a weird one I know. As for the other two on their, the stats, it's simply supido - speed and a-ma- armour. Honestly katakana is such a weird one.

So let's begin with descriptions. The sentence reads:

遠距離から起爆できるペレットを発射する、40mmグレネードランチャー

So this is something way beyond my level of understanding so we'll take it slowly. Let's work backwards first with the katakana. It's simply telling us what the weapon is at the end.

40mmグレネードランチャー

40MM grenade launcher 

Ok cool, we know it's some sort of grenade lancher. Let's break the first kanji before the kara (from)

First up we have 遠距離. What an absolute mess that is. It translates as

遠距離 = Enkyori - Long distance.

Right so, we know it's main goal is long distance and we can assume attack. Excellent. Kara means from so let's move onto 起爆

起爆 = Kibaku - Detonation

Lovely, so throw the from in there and we get 遠距離から起爆

                                                                            Enkyori kara kibaku

 Technically it will be longdistance from detonation but we do the old japanese backwards and we get 

Detonation at long distance

 Enkyori kara kibaku  

      遠距離から起爆

Awesome. 

After that we have dekiru. I've only just learned what Dekiru (dekimasu) and it can roughly mean come from or just can. It can do something. As such

遠距離から起爆できるペレット

Enkyori kara kibaku dekiru peretto

Long distance from detonation can pellet.

            Do the shuffle

Pellets that can be detonated from long distance

So yeah, even for me this will require some getting used to. I just simplified it to being backwards for the first bit. Pellet detonation from long distance. As long as you understand what it's getting at.

を発射する - Fires or to fire

So all together we have 

遠距離から起爆できるペレットを発射する、40mmグレネードランチャー

Enkyori kara kibaku dekiru peretto o hassha suru, 40 mm gurenēdoranchā

40mm Grenade launcher that fires pellets that can be detonated from long distance.

Crazy.

水曜日の翻訳

Another Wednesday flies by in Quarantine. It seems Uni is looking good once more as they've assured me all will be sorted. That's one relief I guess. Forgive the rushed into, I'm physically (and mentally) tired from dealing with this however we seem to be in the green for now. As for the physical, I believe I was suffering a haunting last night. Doorbell going off at midnight, noises of unknown origin. Crazy shit. Also, my arms hurt from weight lifting. ANYWAY

Today will be a nice short one once again on Seige. Nothing too long this time, I promise. First, we'll be looking at the special ability of the character 火花今川, Hibana Imagawa. She is part of the 攻撃側 side on Rainbow six Seige. If you don't know the kanji I just put there, read the previous post! I want to start using as much kanji as possible (I am speaking to me here) just to help with memory.

This is the only reason I know her name as 今川

For some background, each character has its own little loadout menu complete with skins you can purchase, weapon customization menus (everybody gets two weapons to choose from) skin customization menus, and an explanation on their special ability. As of writing, I only know Imagawa has some weird explosive sticky grenade launcher that can launch onto blockades and detonate. So let's translate it. This may take a bit to cover/

Let's begin with the top message. Let's skip the katakana as we know it says match. So after that, we have some kanji. Lovely. Now, the second kanji there may be familiar. It's kanji for the start or the beginning of something which is...

始め - Hajime, start or begin or beginning.

Pretty much if you see 始 anywhere it will definitely imply something is starting. Can you guess what it means yet? Only problem is it doesn't say hajime. YEP, it's time for a change based on the kanji prior. So the kanji prior is

開- Hiraki. It means open. It actually looks like two gates shifted open with a temple that lays in wait. Open, Unseal, it pretty much deals with it. If you see a sign saying...

公開－Kokai, It means open to the public or released.

For now, though, it means released or public. Combined with Hajime, Hiraki becomes

開始 - Kaishi also meaning start or commencing.

So with that, we have
マッチが開始されました - The match has started.
matchu ga kaishi saremashita

Crazy, and that's just the first small message at the top. Saremashita is like suru or shimasu from what I can gather. Since the match has started, it's saremashita.

Good god how far along are we?


Next up we have the arrow with ESC next to it, I'll do this one quickly.
If you look closely, it actually has our good screaming friend 攻撃 meaning attack! As for the final kanji I really wish it was に戻る but I guess return to attack wouldn't really make sense. The last kanji is

系 - Kei meaning system.

So 攻撃系 just means attack system which we know as the menu showing the 攻撃側

The two katakana menus say Hedogia and Uniformu, take a guess!

The kanji next to the customization menu say...

管理 - Kanri meaning management. The to between kanri and the katakana acts as an *and* so we have

 管理とカストマイス simply mean management (in regards to weapons) and customization!
kanri to customaisu

The kanji block beneath that is a nice easy one. Remember the Soviet Union  Russian Federation olyimpic extravaganza held in sochi?Well,

装備 - Soubi - equipment.

Remember, we are in the 管理 menu so of course, we are going to see a tab for 装備.
(Note, souchi and soubi both mean equipment but have a different second kanji, I'm unsure why but in this instance it's soubi)

Still, keeping up? Yes, I apologize for the rushed nature of things but I've just received an email I must attend to.

Finally, at the bottom, we have.

Let's break this down at sonic speed. The (I) is letting us know something about these jumbled phrases. Alas, none of these kanji look familiar.

The I is information for us English speakers and it's no different here. The kanji is

情報 - Jouho - Information. What a great piece of kanji too. Fun to say and easy to remember. Now Joho can also mean intelligence and this section is where the character stats and bios can be located. So 情報 is incredibly useful here.

Beneath 情報 we have

詳細 - Shosai - Details
統計 - Tokei - Statistics

Keep in mind, 時計 is tokei too but is used for clock/watch. Notice this tokei has Ji from jikan in front of it. They mean equally different things.

That's it for today, I've just gotten the email from the university so I've got some reading to do. We shall finish this tomorrow.

悲しい

Mairu ga kita

And it's mail you don't want to receive. Due to COVID 19, the University course I applied for was, canceled. Yeah. THANKFULLY, what I can do is take a pretty similar course however that one lasts 4 years. To be honest, I'm a little letdown and financially, I'm unsure if I can handle 4 years but regardless I'll be taking it. This is just a hassle due to financing already being sorted. No post for tonight got a lot to plan out.

HAHA

Ok, a small post. Mostly to take my mind of this. Ah Covid, can you kindly fuck off, please?

So let's begin. I know I said I will be focusing on Far Cry but I'd like to delve a little into a game called Rainbow Six Seige. I've been a fan of rainbow six since vegas but it's evolved more into a counter strike style hero shooter. I usually dislike this kind of game, but I'll be honest. It's very addicting. I deliberately chose Japanese as the language this time. It has its difficult moments but compared to Far cry it's a cakewalk. Let's begin with the main menu and an In-game screenshot.

It seems the vegas team went to space.

The main menu here consists mostly of katakana, making it much easier to decipher. No 続ける this time. Though, If we remember what that meant I guess it wouldn't make any sense. At the top of the screenshot, we have the most easily recognizable slam of katakana for games. ホーム. This literally means home. Next to it, we have オペレーター. If you play seige, have a guess! Finally, we have ショップ meaning.... STORE! ha, kidding. It's everyone's favorite Shoppu. So we have...

ホーム.                  オペレーター            ショップ

簡単だったでうか❓　もちろん！


So then, we've got the top cleared. Nicely done me. So, that big blue Katakana button? Another easy one thanks to katakana. Honestly if you're struggling to get katakana like I was (and still am to be honest) grab an app called Katakana pro. You'll be golden.

I did lie, however. I was sat looking at this one for a while since it was far from easy. This one reads "Maruchipureinyukama wo purei"

That being multiplayer for the top line, signifying click here for multiplayer. Below, it states Newcomer wo Purei meaning play newcomer game mode. This was due to me just starting the game at the time <level 6 though!> The only kanji we have on here is right at the bottom near alerts.

The top line being Amaru explorer set
Easy but not really, I sounded like a muppet trying to spell this out

Here we have 名 most commonly found in 名前 meaning name AND NOT KIMI and 声 meaning voice. If you recall, we had a very similar one to this.

音声 - Onsei! Meaning sound. Well, to me sound and voice settings but regardless
So, I made the same mistake of immediately seeing as I saw and said Nakoe. It's wrong. I don't know what. This time it's...

名声- Meisei. Meaning fame. It seems Koe becomes sei again.

That's it for the main menu. Before rounding off this post, here's one more

Lovely fat kanji to finish the day

Before we begin, I want you to stand up, pretend you're holding a katana and scream
KOOOOOOOOOGEKIIIIIIIIIII

Thanks total war shogun II. Yes, so Kogeki or 攻撃 means attack. DO NOT confuse this and jump straight to attack on titan and argue that 進撃 (shingeki) is attack from the famous attack on Titan. It's poor translation. (Look at me trying to sound smart. Shingeki is more attune to "march or advancing" so funnily enough attack on titan should be march of the titan or titans advance or something a long those lines. I don't know, I'm still a novice. Back to it.

So we have 攻撃 meaning attack and the kanji at the end is 側 - soba, but in this instance it's Gawa meaning side or team. Therefore we have

攻撃側 - Attacking side. - kogeki Gawa

This also means one kanji from the rival team is already done for us! On the other hand we have
防衛 - Boei, meaning defense. 町の防衛 means town defense etc etc. So, since we know 側 we can just put them together

防衛側 - Defense side or defending side. - Boei gawa

Well, that's it for today. Enjoy folks.

僕の記憶は無駄

The sad truth

My memory is completed garbage. Garbage in the fact that for some reason, it can hear a word once. I literally mean once and never forget it. I'll use the term 急げ for example. It means to go quickly. So why, despite writing a whole blog post on it, Can I not remember 戻る?? You know, Modoru, to return. Desktop ni Modoru. Maybe if I type it 20 times...

戻る modoru - to return

戻る - modoru - to return

戻る - modoru to return

戻る -modoru - to return

戻る- modoru - to return

さて。終わった私はまだ忘れます

It even comes up in the next game I was planning on dissecting 

に戻る How I hate you so

Anyway yes, The brain is pretty pathetic. I don't seem to be the only one that has this issue. It seems to be more of a general issue with language learning. Unless you have a photographic memory you simply won't remember everything on first, second, hell even fith glance. 所がない. It can't be helped. It's not healthy to get mad though, I find that if you just do as much cram as you can, expose yourself to the word as much as possible and try to use it in daily life, your brain will become more attuned to it. Sleep seems to work too. Anyway, enjoy the quick teaser post. 私はベッドに戻る

やたぞ！

Screw modoru though

ファークライニュードーン

I Jumped ahead

As I stated in my previous posts, one thing I would at least like to try is to play a game all the way through in its native Japanese. That means no English subs, all menus/instructions in Japanese and thus adapt or die. Well, not die. That's a bit extreme. Regardless, I had planned to do this far later down the line until it seems as if fate intermingled. I recently purchased Ubisofts UPLAY subscription service, mostly for Breakpoint and Assassins creed. Yes, I'm aware there is some hypocrisy with my stance on video games and Ubisoft while contributing to the company however, I'll discuss this in a later post. 

The beauty of Uplay (and Steam of course) is that regardless of where you're from, you can choose to install additional languages. Ubisoft has a brilliant track record of well done Japanese games, something which surprised me. As you can guess, I downloaded Breakpoint and had Japanese audio as well as watchdogs 2. What went wrong however was Far Cry New Dawn. I'm unsure what I actually did, but I seemed to of switched everything to Japanese. Menus, dialogue etc. Rather than change it, I decided to roll with it. Playing games in Native Japanese has aided me a lot. I was navigating menus with ease to my surprise. While I obviously couldn't understand everything, I simply utilized Kanji I already knew and applied. Such as 音声. I read this as....

音 - On, the first kanji from 音楽 meaning music

声 - Voice

With my prior knowledge, I guessed Onkoe? It's actually Onsei however It did lead me to what I guessed. Sound settings! It's little victories like that which make it worth it. 

音声－onsei

Being a Western game, Katakana was all over the place. As I posted previously, katakana is not my strong point. I'm getting there but it could definitely use some work. Funnily enough, I was able to work out a large portion of words and sentences. 

It's a bit of a culture shock being absolutely devoid of any English, but definitely beneficial in the long run

I'm unsure if you can actually decipher that screenshot due to blog spots restrictions but already their game has taught me に向かう

Seeing 向 without even considering the ni prior which usually signifies movement, I thought it was nani or something. Foolish me Mukau is a weird one. On value, it means "to face" but can also be used as "to go" or "head to" or even better "I'm off too". My example from that screenshot is

トンネル に向かう - Tunnel ni mukau.

Head to the tunnel.

Alternatively, if we made it 私はトンネルに向かう It would be "I'm off to the tunnel" rather than the order head to the tunnel. From my already knowledge, I'm confused on why  トンネルに行く was not used. Instead of Mukau, it uses Niiku coming from ikimasu meaning to go.  I'll have to look into this further. As for the writing at the top, I had no clue. Breaking it apart, we have Wo meaning it's a doing something sentence but apart from that, I had no idea. I translated it earlier to saying

希望を求めて meaning "In search of hope" or "seeking hope" which makes sense due to an earlier objective.

ホープカウンティーに向かう　- Head to hope country county

Finally, we have the issue of objectives. Thankfully, Far cry is pretty straight forward with it's objectives. It's usually 'liberate this' or 'kill that' so I wasn't too worried about them. Regardless it was also a great way to figure out what I was meant to do.

Here we have our objectives. The action I found easy to understand. We have 見 which pretty much tells us we'll be looking or seeing. Adding つける is a conjunction and thus turns Mitsuke (find) into the order for locating. As such, it's asking us to locate 40 pieces of duct tape and 材料見つける Which I believe means material? 

The rest of the game is not so simple because, well, of course, it isn't. It's a game in a language I don't truly understand! That's the beauty though. It's like a huge puzzle, piecing it together. 

The main menu is something pretty much every game has. The majority of it is written in katakana. I was able to read all bar the top one. From top to bottom...

続ける - To continue - Tsuzukeru

ニューゲーム - New game

サバイバルガイド - Survival Guide

オプション - Option

クレディット - Credit

ストー - Store

デスクトップに戻る　－desktopnimodoru

　　　戻る - Pretty much means to return. On it's own, Modo is just return. if you wanted to say something like I'll be back in ten, you'd use modorimasu. 

１０分したら戻ります - Juubun shitara modorimasu

I've still got a long way to go in far cry new dawn, but I hope it increases my reading ability further!

電声

*If the Grammar seems off please read on. There's a reason for it.*

It's 2:22 in the morning, nothing really special is going on apart from the fact I'm sat here. Once again listening to the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack. It's so addicting. I just can't get over it regardless of this, this blog post is a weird one mostly because I'm starting to really enjoy this. Maybe it's aesthetic. Maybe it's the appeal. Maybe it's just the idea of just writing down your thoughts into a nice little online document that can be accessed at any time, by anyone, is weird. It's very nice. 

 I do hope that this blog does become my nice little feedback on my review once 2022 hits. I think it will be 2022. It's got to be 2022. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. So while I did plan to originally have quite a calming night, one filled with listening to otsuichi and an obscure radio which I'll get into in a different post. I instead find myself downloading Ghost Recon breakpoint. I shouldn't have done this. I definitely shouldn't have done this. I recently bought Ghost Recon breakpoint on the PlayStation 4 not four days ago for 15 pounds. It was a waste of money. Not to be a snob or anything. But after playing games on the PC and it is a PC that can handle anything I can throw at it, It's weird playing games on the PS4. That 30 frames per second that a little screen the motion blur that lives every game again to go over it. Once more. I hate being snobby but games are just Superior on the PC. Now Ghost. Recon actually has quite a bad reputation, but after playing this Splinter cell throwback mission I can't help but get excited for playing on the PC. 

You see Ubisoft released this thing very recently that lets you pay5.99 and you get access to a bunch of games for free. Well not for free. Obviously. It's $5.99 a month, but you can get Ghost Recon and all the DLC for only $5.99 as well as any future titles. For example, I do believe two days ago a new Assassins Creed was announced. I can't wait to read this back and realize how awful it probably will be. Regardless, I apologize for the lack of Japanese discussion in this blog post. I'm going to keep updating of course with Japanese discussions, but alas sometimes I just want to get stuff off my chest that being me trying to defend myself or dropping 20 quid for one game and 599 throughout each month subscriptions. Back to Japanese, the name of this blog post is Denkoe. This means the electric voice. This is the first post I have recorded with my phone inbuilt ability to listen and transcribe my voice into writing. If this has grammatically issues, blame that. I have deliberately not fixed them so I can read this back and rate how well it worked.

I'll leave you with these few words and the song for tonight, which I highly recommend is a got, of course, another Sound Hole 2 soundtrack. 

This one never forgives me. Never forget me. 

電- Electric

声- Voice

手紙が来た －a letter came

So that's what it was

While my translation was, sort of correct. It seems there is a far easier way to say 'I got a letter' than my original Tegami wo uketotta. I believe mine was far too formal and seemed to specify a certain letter rather than just informing the listener they got a letter. The closer translation of those first amazing words from Silent hill 2. 

Tegami ga Kita. 

来た - Kita meaning came. 

I was able to find out the correct translation from おついち. A Japanese YouTuber who I have started to watch religiously as he does let's plays of classic horror games with a fellow YouTuber, 2BRO. It's made me think more about delving into Japanese only games. No aids or assistance and forced to straight-up manually translate while playing. I already do this while watching おついち however it's very different to playing a game which requires serious attention and instruction following.  It sounds grueling but could be a good personal project. I did try this with a demo of 龍が如く7 to a pretty decent degree but nowhere near enough to understand entirely what was going on. My katakana still needs some serious attention too. 

Regardless, Kita is a lot simpler than remembering uketotta, or maybe I'm just tired. While I told myself I'd grab an early night, I instead remained awake till three, trying to get a working patch for Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City. It sounds like a weird game to invest time into, but as a kid I absolutely adored it. Still do, to some degree. Planning on making a video about it soon. It's a real shame because that game is just the perfect spin-off. It's flawed beyond belief yet I see it as the perfect 

PODCAST GAME.

Podcast games are brilliant. I tend to classify podcast games as ones that you don't really need to pay attention too. I've spent a near 700 hours on Gmod purley because I'll switch on a podcast and just shoot shite. Same for games like ARMAs editor and Total wars quick battles. Nothing better than firing up a mindless game, grabbing some food, and just shooting the shit while listening to random voices over the internet. Helpful too if you're learning a language and just want some background noise, picking out words and sentences you understand. Speaking of which, I think I'll do that now. 

これは誰の犬ですか

これー This

誰 - Who

犬 - Dog

Kore ha dare no inu desu ka

Who's dog is this?

手紙を受け取った - I got a Letter

ようこそ

It truly is amazing how the brain can quite literally just decide to devise new projects then suddenly give itself an unstoppable craving to do it. I guess that's what this blog will be. A way to settle my craving for three things. A diary to reflect back on in roughly 2023, an incredibly simple memory tool for certain words and just a place to post random rubbish in relation to current on-going events.

For a little background, I've been doing casual learning of Japanese for roughly a year now. I decided to take it seriously by pursuing a dream of quitting my job and going to University as well as participate in a 'night school' course for an entry-level 3 Certification in Practical Japanese. In a good turn of events, I was accepted into University (though with the current situation it seems that will be most likely be disrupted) and achieved that level 3 certification! 

As such, this blog will mostly be a small compendium of random words and their explanations as well as (when the time comes) my time In Japan. If all goes to plan and assuming the world does not end, I should be there for a year of study in 2021. Not going to lie, going from enjoying Japanese games as a child to completing a level 3 with horizons of actually moving there for a year is daunting hence why I'm so eager to get to at least a decent degree.

As for where I am now, I can read both hiragana and katakana to a good level and each day I make the attempt to pick up more kanji to add to my vocabulary. It's very much like collecting pokemon and makes all the difference reading a sentence and not being thrown off by a random 美 or 森本. It's my actual speaking which requires practice so hopefully, I'll have willing speaking partners in Uni...

Hopefully...

Funnily enough, the kanji I use most in my user name is 雨 mostly because I enjoy how much it actually looks like rain. It was also the first kanji I ever learned, something which I believe my cousin told me around age 7. To be honest, he was the one that introduced me to some classic Japanese games as a child and is probably the reason for all of this. Boom. Butterfly effect.

The Silent Hill reference for this blog post is not just because I'm listening to Akira Yamaoka but rather something else for this blog. Since my work is shut, I'm earning furlough pay however that doesn't mean I've personally stopped working. After completing some work for my Father, I decided to buy the novel version of Silent Hill 2. To my knowledge, there is not an English official translation of this book, and it's actually quite rare in western countries. 

It will be arriving from Japan so I'm very uncertain when it will arrive. Regardless, I want to make it my long and extensive project to translate two pages a day. It will be a major learning experience for me and once complete I can post it here. I hope that's legal. It's for educational purposes so. I'll probably make a blog post about Silent Hill 2, I rate it one of the greatest games of all time.

Anyway, that's it from me, expect a post tomorrow and I'll see you then.

手紙 =  Tegami. Letter
受け取った = Uketotta. To receive something.

Therefore, Tegami wo uketotta means To receive a letter. This obviously is not the same as 'I got a letter' due to the difference in the tongue. I'll report back tomorrow once I've actually done some research and not just assumed my Japanese is correct.

Today's choice of song is: Dance With Night Wind - Akira Yamaoka