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Index Hello and welcome to my Learning How To Learn Japanese guide series! My name is Kenshin_sama, and today I’d like to go over a basic overview of what these guides will be about. What I aim to accomplish with this series is share some of the observations I made while studying in hopes that they aid you in finding a sustainable method for yourself. While many of the techniques I discuss can be applied to almost any area of study, I’ll be writing these guides specifically for those who want to learn Japanese. Guide format: After dedicating several hours to writing this guide, I came to the realization that I’ve put in far too much information to consume all at once; and after some deliberation, I decided to break my guide into a series of smaller guides to provide moderate break points and make it a little less intimidating. Each guide will be dedicated to certain lifestyle aspects or learning techniques that can make the process of learning Japanese easier. Every time I create a new guide, I'll add a link to an index at the top of each entry for convenient navigation. What you should know before you start learning Japanese: Gaining proficiency in any new language is going to require a substantial time investment throughout the entirety your life; make sure you can justify that kind of commitment to yourself before getting started. There are plenty of reasons you might want to consider learning Japanese other than for increased enjoyment of your hobbies, but make sure they’re enough to keep you motivated. The key to studying effectively is studying consistently. In the wise words of James Raymond Watkins, “A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.” If you can spend more time studying, great, but it is imperative that you take the time to study almost every day, even if it’s only for a short duration. I’m not sure if this is still a commonly held belief, but I think I’ll go ahead and address this argument in case you get the wrong idea. It is not impractical to learn a completely new language as an adult. You may have heard it said on occasion that the best time to learn any new language is at a young age. I’m not willing to verify the accuracy of that statement since it’s not exactly relevant to this guide (I’m not writing this for 5-year-olds), but I can say with some certainty that it is never too late to get started. I’ve heard plenty of stories about people who’ve started learning their second language in their late 20s or older, and have achieved fluency in that language with enough practice. Just know that it’s perfectly normal to suck at learning a new language at first; your age is not to blame. Afterword: Thank you very much for reading. It was not my intention to make the introduction post this long, but I wanted to be sure I made some of my points as clear as possible. I'd greatly appreciate it if any of you would be kind enough to share your thoughts on this guide. In part 2, I’ll be going over a certain method of learning Japanese grammar through Anki. I'm almost positive that this method won't take over as the primary go-to for learning grammar, but I figured it'd be worth sharing anyways since it's working well for me and I haven't seen it brought up in any other JP guide (at least the ones promoted on this site). Hope to see you there!

Welcome to another episode of Shovelware Adventures! This time, we'll take a break from our favourite, the Sakura series, to take a look at a much more obscure corner of the OELVN scene. The venture into commercial visual novel development by the German fan translator working under the label Yume Creations effected in some of the strangest VNs available on Steam and beyond. Combining competent art and interesting ideas with trashy ecchi, pieces of absolutely disastrous, bizarre writing and straight up failures in the English language, these projects are all experiences that will defy your expectations – just not necessarily in the ways their authors would want them to. Aozora Meikyuu A nukige without sex scenes, this little VN offers a rather charming heroine, who sadly gets involved in a totally nonsensical plot and various sexual scenarios that are never shown to the player. In the game’s story, our shut-in protagonist is forced to go out on a rare quest to buy groceries and on his way back home is nearly crashed to death by a (nude) girl falling from the sky. What follows, is a series of rather amusing interactions between the main character and the mysterious woman that invaded his life, which sadly can lead only to some literally incomprehensible and abrupt bad endings, or to a single positive one. The latter, admittedly, somewhat won me over by the virtue of being heartwarming, but was also based on some highly-questionable logic, making in turn everything that happened earlier rather hard to understand. The bad endings, which make little sense even after discovering the mystery central to the story and the true conclusion of the plot, along with the sexual tension constantly present in the game, building up towards non-existent hentai scenes, most likely suggest some heavily problematic development process. Because of all this, the final product is rather hard to recommend, even though I seriously enjoyed certain elements of it and ideas the author tried to implement – it is, indeed, a particularly unfortunate hunk of rabbit poo, not really offensive in any way, but hardly worth your attention. Final rating: Rabbit Poo Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

This is a visual novel created by a company named Jirai Soft and this is the only decent VN they have, well I never read Hotarubi no Shoujo but Kurui no Tsuki was awful... moving on with the review. Basic plot. Augment is a VN that starts in such incredible way, it hooks you immediately, the main character is an 80 years old dude who is in a home for elderly, lamenting on his life, on how plain and dull it was and how he regrets being a good for nothing. Remembering how he depended on his sister all his life and so on... basically he hates himself thinking that he is is a burden and decides to commit suicide, so he grabs a knife and stabs himself on the neck. While he is dying he starts thinking that he doesn't want to die and wants another chance and at some point a weird voice tells him that his wish is granted and that he has a second chance to find happiness. This scene was amazing and a little bit gory too, in fact the entire prologue is very well done. After that he find himself in the park which was really close from his house (where he grew up while he was still young), he is actually young again, at least his body is. He goes back to his house and there he meets all his family members again, including his father, mother and sister. This part again has a really good impact and it was really well done, everything mixed with good humor. He basically travels back in time with the help of this shinigami or god of dead, which granted him with a second chance to find happiness in his life. So the VN is about him reliving his life and trying to find happiness... by fucking one of the 3 heroines xD (falling in love, creating a new life with them etc, etc) Up until this point the VN was fantastic at least it was something new, sadly it just doesn't keep up... There is a common route and 3 heroines. To unlock the real or true ending you need to read all of them and after reading everything you can re-read it again to unlock at certain points hidden eroge scenes with certain characters and new eroge scenes for all the heroines but without a proper ending or anything, kinda like an omake or fandisk but inside the game itself. The heroines and plot Your childhood friend Shiho Umekawa. Her route was kinda meh and it was ruined by the eroge scene, which was placed in a really bad time. Nothing really interesting to talk about her without spoiling everything. spoilers of her route ahead My other huge problem with her are her huge fucking tits, is annoying and looks bad. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Satsuki Jin, a tsundere from another class of your same age and also the best friend of your childhood friend. Her route was the worst one for me, she was a decent character and the tsudere side very mild, she has a pervert good for nothing old brother that is used as a punch bag... The drama on her route was so bad and convoluted that I won't even bother explaining it because it doesn't make sense and it was overly dramatic to a point that it was almost funny, it is actually almost as bad as the true ending. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- And finally Nami Susonobe, a junior or "kouhai" from your school too. She was probably the best route, she likes to cook and is kinda timid but not clueless of what goes around her. You actually spend time with her, just bonding and developing your relationship, their love is not forced. She doesn't love you from the start and they also share the same type of humor which makes them a really fun and dynamic couple, constantly teasing each other of following the weird pattern they have of speaking mostly with jokes. Or doing the boke and tsukkomi. Also the sex with her didnt feel forced, it felt real and not just an excuse to show them having sex, like the natural progression of their relationship. She has a really overly protective sister (for a good reason) which happens to be your English teacher and she also hates you and doesn't wants you to be with her. This route didn't need any stupid forced drama to be good, it was good on its own. Without the forced drama it would have been a decent story to read but nope... Spoilers: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally we have the Main character, Hideya Kawashima, he is actually interesting and not your typical main character, he isn't clueless of everything around him and constantly jokes and teases (sometimes to the point of bullying) with everyone, he is 80 years old lol so he acts accordingly... kinda , he is for the most part pretty funny specially with Nami. About the humor, I don't really like this type but I found myself laughing with some scenes so for the most part it was good. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are other characters but those are the main ones, I should also talk about Hideya's sister (she also has huge tits that are annoying) and the shinigami itself but I'm tired already and there is no point in talking about them. The true ending... The true ending is the worst part of the whole VN. Have you seen that picture of dustmania where the guy is fucking a brain? is THAT bad xD I wanted to see something about the shinigami, they actually trick you into believe that there is more to that character (at the end of some routes the shinigami says certain things that leads you to think that there is more to the character itself, and he/she also uses the word "boku" but has a girl distorted voice so is hard to tell if it is a she or he, which was probably used on purpose for that reason... but they don't, instead they do what is up until this point a common thing in this VN, threw some sad stuff, make it very convoluted and then resolve it in a few minutes.... everyone is happy YAY. The main problem with this VN is that it turns itself after the prologue in a pure comedy... which isn't bad per se but the prologue kinda tricks you, making you believe that it will be something else, and you keep expecting that but when it comes is just a forced drama at the end of each route that doesn't fit with the rest or anything ... if it even makes sense at all in the first place, and it last around 1 or 2 hours. If I have to describe this VN I would say that it is 85% comedy and 15% of very bad forced drama. The music and Art The music was good with some good solid songs here and there that fit well with the scenes, it's fully voiced (except for the main character which is only voiced in the true ending) and the art was actually pretty good too aside from the huge tits in some characters. Oh yeah there is something really annoying, every time you start the VN the logo of the company shows up with a fucking loud noise. (careful if you are using headphones) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6c48PRVMV4 Here are some CGs Rating +Good humor +Good Art style for the most part +Amazing voice acting +Pretty good music +Nami's route if you leave the ending part. -Bad drama and nonsensical endings. -Bad true end. My rating of this VN is a Ryuk out of 10. For the reading difficulty, is hard to say but I would say medium, not something to start with, The humor and how the main character talks is just not something you will see normally, he talks in a teasing way pretty much 90% of the time, making references or derailing the conversations over and over again, using crude humor, kanji puns and everything you can imagine, for example he can start talking as if he were fighter pilot (using military language) and keeping that going for a while and some characters follow his humor, so yeah not something easy to read probably. Also the drama parts can be quite tricky or they were for me at some points (if you read the spoilers you can understand how convoluted and tricky it gets) There are a lot of reference here and there (I still don't know if the "kain" that he refers at one point is the legacy of kain the games or not) It took me around 30 hours to complete it but my reading speed is quite slow, you can't just read one route so that's another bad side of this vn.