Ryu ga Gotoku 5 is really really awesome. I hope it gets localized or you guys bite the bullet and import it at some point. Totally worth it.
Oscar, you pick it up yet, or were you just playing the demo a couple weeks ago?
How much Japanese do you speak and/or read?
For the longest time, I couldn't play Japanese games; it felt like work, where I'd already spent 10+ hours on any given day. I didn't feel like muddling through more Nipponese in my "off time."
My Japanese isn't that great. I can navigate around towns and maps, ask for directions and order basic items at a restaurant, but my kanji knowledge is absolutely shit. I took it in high school, but my university didn't offer it, so it's pretty much stagnated aside from playing games.
I probably understand about 50% of the dialogue in RGG5, but what I miss out on I can fill in based on the context of what I do understand. It's actually been great practice at retaining/learning vocabulary.
In California, my school started with Spanish in junior high, and then had a choice of French or Spanish in high school. I'd wanted to speak Japanese from age 6 or 7, but didn't know I could have just gone to jr. college for those lessons whenever I'd wanted, and received jr. high and high school credit for them. Hell, I would have received
college credit for them. Once I got to college, I studied two semesters' worth, but was frustrated by the favoritism shown to all the Nikkei who started off with "kitchen Japanese."
Ironically, 99% of what ability I have has come from conversation with locals after I moved here. As a consequence, my kanji knowledge is poop outside of game development and ordering food.
My speaking is basically sufficient for day-to-day communication, with the ability to go in depth only on my topics of interest. I can read like a champ, though, and I understand I'd say a good 85% of what I hear when I watch the news or listen to native speakers, as long as they don't go too crazy with the non-regional slang.
I am jealous of your ability to read so much. If I could read more Japanese, I might read more manga, but I am limited to stuff with furigana/yomigana, which tends to be young-ish stuff. The most complicated thing I've read without yomigana is GANTZ, which I was crazy for until vol. 16 or so. Newspapers? Forget about it.
