Slimes!

The past few weeks, I have been doing a full court press on the Japanese studying. I want to eventually become fluent ... a lofty goal, but one I feel I can reach. Of course, the best way to reach that goal would be to live for a few years in Japan. A tantalizing option, but unless I can find a job that is not a low-wage English teaching job, it would be a difficult option. For now, I must content myself with a variety of books, software, and conversations with my fiancee.

One fun supplement I just added to my arsenal is playing through the Japanese PS2 release of Dragon Quest 5. I picked this up a couple years ago on it's release day in Japan for the novelty factor (the fact that I found a place with it on release was the big novelty - as Dragon Quest games tend to sell out rather quickly and induce much skipping of school/work in the Japanese gaming populace. This game has never seen release in the US (although the DS rerelease should be making its way here eventually).

When I got the game, I started into it, but then lost focus and stopped playing. This time, I have restarted, with my handy DS J-E dictionary and kanji lookup in hand(awesome software where I can draw an kanji (chinese-derived Japanese characters) on my DS to lookup what it is ... and it is amazing how well it does and getting my horribly written kanji. Asako bought me this software ... she rocks so much). Even without the dictionary, it is amazing how much more I am understanding than just a few years ago, which is encouraging. Yes, it is slow playing through, but still fun (I love old-school RPGs) and a great supplement to my text book/software learning.