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My Japanese Coach: Konnichiwa and beyond

Just as we did with My French Coach, we're taking a long, hard look at the recent My Japanese Coach -- but with one key difference. This time, instead of just lowly little me, slaving along with some knowledge of French, this time I'm struggling with a language I know very little of, and I'm working with a "partner" who knows quite a bit of Japanese already.

Before tearing into Ubisoft's latest DS language trainer, if asked, I would have struggled to produce ten words in Japanese, and one of those ten would have been in the title of this post (and another would have been sushi). Perhaps that's exaggerating; after all, I did know a bit more than the fact that I prefer nigiri to sashimi, such as the words for red, blue, and green, and words like "please." My Japanese Coach-partner -- also known as my husband -- has always been very good about teaching me words when I ask. I suppose that makes me 1% more knowledgeable about the Japanese language than the average person pulled off the street.

And that fraction means absolutely nothing, I learned, when you sit down to study a language like Japanese with any tool, even My Japanese Coach.
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