A lot of people might not know about emulation or translation, so I’m going to take a moment to describe what I’m using. If you know what’s going on, just jump to the next section.

Preparation

Here’s what you’re going to need:

A computer

To be entirely honest, a Mac will be the best because it can use JEDict.

An Emulator

An emulator is a program that emulates one of the old console game systems, like Super Nintendo or Genesis. Emulators are generally considered legal to own and are easy to find. For this entry, I’m using this version of SNES9X for Mac.

A ROM

A ROM is an “image” file of a video game. When you open this file with an emulator, you can play the video game as you normally would on a console. The legality of ROMs has always been a bit touchy, but in the opinion of most people, as long as you are playing games that have no chance of profit and are not reselling them, you should be safe. An excellent site for Japanese ROMs is this one, which does ask that you sign up. I’m using the Japanese edition of Final Fantasy 6 here.

JEDict and maybe an Electronic Dictionary

The reason why a Mac is so helpful here is that it has access to JEDict, which is a fantastic program for quickly looking up Japanese words. A great aspect about JEDict is that if you know one kanji in a compound, you can type in that kanji and search all of its common compounds. Unfortunately, if you have absolutely no idea about a kanji, JEDict isn’t all that helpful. That’s where having an electronic dictionary with an input is really handy. Because I’m cheap, I use the Nintendo DS Kanji Dictionary.

Anki

You want to remember the words, right? Seriously, if you’re studying any language and not using Anki, you’re cheating yourself. Go get it here.

A Word Processor

Because, you know, you’re translating. Again, because I’m a cheapskate, I use Open Office.

Time and Skill

You might want to look at this as Japanese study and not playing video games, because you might spend an hour in real time moving through 10 minutes of game time. It’s a bit sad, really, but just know that the more you do this, the quicker you’ll get. Your Japanese skill can be of any level, but it might benefit intermediate to advance students the most. I consider myself intermediate, if that helps.

Just Let Me Play Already

Holy crap I don’t understand anything!

Don’t worry! That’s the point of leveling up your Japanese with video games. Here’s why I had you go with SNES9X: the pause feature.

Click that button in the lower left, and the game will freeze while you begin your translating. This is why video game translation takes so long–constantly pausing and resuming and pausing again–it’s almost enough to drive you away at first. But after a while, you get familiar with the game’s lingo. You understand what’s going on with just a glance. The repeated words become familiar to your brain, and you really begin to play and understand the game.

My desktop sure looks cluttered…

Wait! What do I translate?

Video Games and Your Japanese Study

You should keep in mind that video game Japanese (or manga Japanese, or anime Japanese, etc.) is not really reflective of everyday usage. If you dedicate all of your hours to studying Japanese through Final Fantasy 6, you’d be perfectly competent having a conversation about Magitech Armor, but absolutely unable to describe the weather. You should do these translations as an entertaining alternative to your usual routine. That said, you can add quite a bit of vocabulary to your lexicon incredibly quickly by translating Japanese games.

How do I know if I’m accurate?

You can usually find the original English game scripts on www.gamefaqs.com. The original English translations might differ greatly from the original Japanese versions of the game because of a number of reasons, ranging from censorship to cultural differences. However, English scripts can be a good resource if you cannot read a kanji at all.

Science has failed to solve a number of worldly mysteries, perhaps the most notable being the complete inability to find a reliable cure for hangovers. Westerners may not realize the seriousness of hangover cures due to our comparatively slack work habits. You know, us English speakers toss back brews on the weekends like superstitious people throw salt over their shoulder. That’s because we don’t work the next day. Or if we do, we call in sick. For the Japanese, however, being hungover is no excuse for calling in sick. Especially for Saturday work. Saturday work just means you weren’t productive enough during the week, so you just gotta work even harder! That’s why science needs to step up and cure the hangover.

What’s Being Said

I found this article on my Twitter feed. Originally written in 2007, it got picked up recently by a blog search engine and has seen some popular resurgence. The original Japanese is here: http://am6.jp/94S087

Curing Hangovers and 12 Ways to Prevent Them

So you drink a ton and wake up the next day with your head killing you. You’ve had this experience, right? Now you can do something about that harsh hangover, as brought to you by Ono’s Blog. These are things that I’ve heard about and tried, but of course there could be more ways.

• Run hot water over your head.
• Drink Heparize. (It seems to be a liver enzyme in a bottle. Yum!)
• Puke.
• Stay vertical…just keep standing.
• Brush your teeth before going to bed.
• Don’t exercise after drinking.
• Drink a lot of water.
• Sleep.
• Take a digestive aid.
• Take a long, warm bath.
• Get a massage.
• Breathe deeply.

…

Everybody can get overwhelmed by drinking, but if you follow these instructions, you can have a great drinking life!

Maybe it’s cultural differences, but I think the only effective one here is drinking water. OK, not working out after drinking and sleeping are good suggestions, too. But really, who doesn’t want a bath and massage after a night out?

The Japanese Health, Labor, and Welfare ministry recently announced the results of an 11 year long study on the health benefits of soybeans. Turns out that they’ll drastically reduce your chances for lung cancer! But, only if you don’t smoke. Oh! And you have to be a man, too. But if you meet these requirements, score! Eat up that tofu! Snarf down that natto! Edamame ahoy! Just, whatever you do, don’t smoke. Ever. Sound advice.

What’s Being Said

The original article can be viewed here: http://www.asahi.com/science/update/0205/TKY201002050328.html

Soybean Products Protect Against Lung Cancer–But Only for Non-Smoking Men

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare announced that men who don’t smoke and eat a lot of soybean products like tofu and natto have a lower risk of lung cancer compared to men who don’t fit either category. It seems that there’s a connection between the lower cancer risk and the isoflavones in the soybeans.

The research looked at a total of 76,000 men and women aged 45-74 over the course of 11 years. From the first day, the people were split into 4 groups depending on how much soybean products they ate, and then their cancer rates were compared.

The results found that in men that didn’t smoke and ate the most amount of soybean products, eating the amount of isoflavones found in 200 grams of tofu compared to those that ate only about 40 grams of isoflavones, had a 57% less chance of lung cancer. 40 grams of tofu isoflavone can be found in about 3 packs of natto.

As for men that had once smoked and since quit, there was no difference in the cancer rates. Women that ate a lot of soybean products did show a bit lower rate of cancer, but nothing as to be statistically significant.

Because isoflavones are so close to female hormones, there could be possibilities that eating them might help prevent breast cancer and prostate cancer.

According to the head researcher on the project, “In seeing that there’s no effect on people who quit smoking, it shows just how much lingering damage smoking causes at the genetic level.”

So, if you want to really make sure that lung cancer doesn’t affect you, eat that tofu burger and gobble down the natto. Just don’t go for a smoke after.

The city of Fukui, situated in the north of the central part of Honshu, announced on February 4 that they are opening retro-gaming stations featuring classics that the public will love. All in the name of bringing friends and family together. No, really! Also, if you need to kill an hour before your train arrives, why not take a few swings at baddies or collect a few golden rings?

The “game libraries” are packed with everything from the Mega-Drive to the Sega Saturn. So, that covers Sega games, but strangely, the article mentions nothing about Mario. Will there be goomba-stomping and princess saving in the future? We’ve got a month to find out!

What’s Being Said

Here’s a translation from the original source: http://www.itmedia.co.jp/news/articles/1002/04/news071.html

City Opens Up “Game Library”–Can Play Things Like PC Engine and Mega-Drive.

Free retro-gaming will be available at the “Downtown Games Library,” brought by the city board, at the first floor of the City Center Building. Situated right in front of JR Fukui, it aims to bring parents and children together in a fun environment.

In a 50 square meter area, they have everything from the PC Engine, Mega-Drive, NEO-GEO, Sega Saturn, and Dreamcast, all ready to play. Just like a reading library, you can borrow games from the Downtown Games Library.

Among the 130 titles available are games like “Bomber Man,” “Sonic the Hedgehog,” and “Fatal Fury.” After getting suggestions on hardware and software from city workers, the city got permission from makers and sellers to use the machines.

City workers came up with the idea to as a way to enjoy the games they loved as children. They said they wanted friends, colleagues, and parents and their children to communicate and strengthen ties.

…It will be going on until March 31, when the city workers plan to close it down.

My only question is: will this place be open until last train? Or maybe…ramen and retro games?

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author with awesome prose, original story lines, and as I found out recently, an incredible hunger for physical fitness. Since around the age of 27, he’s been training and participating in at least one marathon every year, and within the last decade has fit in time for triathlons. While never seeking a blistering time, he pursues personal goals: maintaining a competitive speed, finishing strong, and never walking or being disqualified. In his 2007 book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami discusses his innermost thoughts on maintaining physical fitness as a means to maintain creativity.

Creativity

Murakami himself admits that he felt he lacked the creativity necessary to produce a novel until around the age of thirty, when for no discernible reason, he wanted to write a novel. Murakami frames creativity as some unintelligible quantity that can just pour out of somebody like water from a bucket, and most often, it does exactly that. A person finds themselves with a bucket of creativity, uses it all at once, and never sees it again. This leads to an artists’ “prime,” after which they might still be productive, but many people will say they lack the originality of their earlier works. Often, artists feel depressed because they believe they will never match their most successful level of creativity.

Athleticism

Working out, of course, causes strain on the body. Specifically, lactic acid. When you regularly work out, you create a tolerance to the toxic effect of lactic acid, and your body gets better at ridding the stuff. Of course, the best athletes work out everyday and have tolerances far beyond the average person. Murakami likens being “athletically fit” to being “creatively fit.” Just as an athlete needs to practice everyday, so do artists. Artists need to build up a tolerance to their creativity, lest it consume them in a flash and abandon them forever. Such a tolerance will allow a high-level of creative output in the future.

Normalcy

When I first started biking some 6 years ago, a 5 mile ride was normal. Then I went a little further, and a 10 mile ride was normal. Then a 20, and then a 30. By the time I was doing 30 mile rides 3 times a week, doing a 10 mile ride meant nothing. My level of normal had risen over time, and as such, doing anything less than normal meant under-performance.

So think about this in terms of Murakami’s likening to creativity. People practice being creative everyday, and many of them build up their abilities, and thus their tolerance. They’ll do something spectacular, a personal masterwork, and anything after that seems less than impressive. For those that feel that their creative peak has passed, they can build up a new tolerance, like returning to the gym.

While Murakami admits this book is a bit of an afterthought and an anti-climax, it’s a fine read to see a writer at his most raw level of talent. The writing is basic, the pace is quick, and the insights very simple. But building insight upon insight over the pages, the reader comes away having gained a lot of knowledge about one way to view the world.