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Gentlemen and others. This conversation is clearly not contributing much to the topic at the moment, so let us let it go. Further discussion can be had through PMs, where threads will not be derailed.

Hi there! I'm not sure if there is any sort of demand for this kind of post, but I thought since there's so many people interested in Japanese media on this forum, maybe some of you would be interested in knowing what it's like living in Japan as a foreigner. So, that's what this thread is for. If you have any questions about the topic, ask away! For those of you who don't know, my name is Andreas, I've been studying Japanese for about four years or so now, and I'm a freelance translator. I spent about half a year in Japan studying the language at a Japanese university, (Josai International University in Togane,) which was honestly one of the most fun experiences of my life. I am going back to Japan again soon to live there for a year this time, (starting August this year,) and I just came back from a short vacation in Japan around a week ago. Needless to say, I like it there. I haven't decided quite yet, but I think me moving there permanently down the line is a very likely scenario. Anyways, I'm not sure what, if anything, people would be interested in hearing about the topic, so I picked one thing my foreign friends have asked me quite a lot. So yeah, do ask if you want to know something else! Are Japanese people generally cold and distant towards westerners? Short answer, they might seem that way at first, but honestly, no! The thing is, Japanese people are generally just very quiet and closed off in public spaces, as they do not want to bother strangers in public. Get a Japanese person a couple of drinks at an izakaya or a karaoke bar, and you won't be able to shut them up, haha. While there might be some Japanese people who are "racist," / cold towards westerners, most people aren't like that at all, and will open up to you quite easily once you get to know them a little bit! Of course, you have to actually get to know them a bit at first for this, and sure, as a foreigner, it might be a little bit harder to get through that first stage. But, it's honestly not that hard, especially if you have some kind of icebreaker/ meet the person in some setting where it would be natural to start up a conversation, like a university, at your job, or out in a club/ bar etc. Of course, not knowing any Japanese will make this a little harder, as Japanese people generally do not speak English very well. (International universities are gold mines if you're looking for Japanese people interested in foreigners, heh. We had trouble eating at times during lunch, as we were swarmed by groups of Japanese students wanting to talk to us, lol.) One tip I'd give western people trying to get to know Japanese people in Japan, try to not be too loud and "pushy". Like I said, Japanese people are often a bit guarded towards strangers, and first impressions are quite important. If you come off as "scary" and loud, it might be harder to get someone to open up to you. Remember, westerners are pretty scary to Japanese people, haha. We're generally a lot taller, they won't know if we speak a word Japanese or not just by looking at us, (and they probably won't know much English,) and we tend to just act quite differently compared to Japanese people in general. The unknown can be pretty scary! So, all these factors can make us quite intimidating. Therefore, try to dial it down a bit, and you'll have a much easier time getting a Japanese person to open up to you. Anyways, that's what I could think of, so hit me with some questions if you want to know more!

Navel just annoucned on twitter that they have started working on a direct sequel to Shuffle, "Shuffle, Episode 2." The game's website. (Very bare-bones atm.) As a big fan of Shuffle, I'm pretty hyped about this!

Try setting your system locale to Japanese too, if you haven't already. Some VNs refuse to boot with any other setting. The Steam version of Hoshizora no Memoria wouldn't boot for me unless I used Japanese locale, despite the entire game being in English.

Have you tried all the compatibility options or just one that was suggested? Forcing 640 x 480 resolution or disabling fullscreen optimization might help, if you haven't already tried those. Make sure all your drivers, especially your graphics driver, is up to date, since some strange problems can occur if they're not. There could be some issue with the newest drivers too, though. If you're already running the latest version, you could try reverting to an older one and see if the problem persists. You could also try disconnecting any secondary display you might be using. I've noticed that some VN's have trouble with a multiple monitor setup even if you only have a single one set as active in Windows, so you have to physically disconnect the other ones to bypass this issue. Antivirus and other security software also have a tendency to clash with certain applications, so you could try turning those off.

Plot twist: Protagonist is actually blind

Yes, it's simply too hard for many of them to bother giving it any real attention. Japanese people do learn English from an early age in school, but because of the factors I mentioned above, they rarely actually learn much from these lessons. The people who are quite skilled at English probably learned most of it from the internet and self study. I think religion is more of a cultural thing than an actual sign of faith in Japan. I can only speak from personal experiences and from the information I know from my friends and what not, but it seems like most people go to shrines and temples more because it's a social and cultural "norm" instead of strong faith. That being said, it does seem to be important to them. At least from what I've seen, people act very respectful towards shrines and temples, and many do go there to pray fairly often. Though, once again, I think this type of prayer is more of a cultural thing than actual faith, but nonetheless, it's fairly important to Japanese people from my knowledge. As far was what the most common religions are, I believe shintoism, the native Japanese "religion", (which is more of a collective term than an actual singular religion,) and buddhism are the two most widespread religions in Japan. There are quite a lot of buddhist temples, and as well as shrines for shintoism around in Japan. Christian churches etc are far fewer in number, though there are some of those too. Most native Japanese people will go to either a local shrine or temple for holidays and what not.

ChuSinGura 46+1 is an interesting kinetic novel although it is pretty long - too long for 'in between'

Ahh, thank you so much for your detailed answer! It seems to be even worse than what I thought. It is amazing that their English is that bad when they should learn that language in school. But I guess that also comes from the huge difference of how the languages work. I mean, I have been learning (on myself) Japanese for 2 years now and even though I have the Kanji and Kana down now it is still such a difficult language to me. With a lot of stuttering I guess I might have a simple conversation now, but not much else. Well, there is one more topic I am interested in, sorry I didn't ask before. That topic would be religion. Not that I am particularly interested in that topic per se, but I am still confused about the many temples and religious group in Japan. Many temples seem to be Buddhist, there also seems to be Konfuzianism and also some Christians and even nature religion(?). How is that really? Did you make any experiences? How important does religion seem for the Japanese? Thank you in advance

I'm not aware of any VNs about superheroes. So I'll list some "chuuni" VNs, that have a lot of action.... * Sorcery Jokers . Magic users (like a steampunk JRPG) in an urban fantasy setting. * Idol Magical Girl Chiru Chiru Michiru . A magical girl spinoff of the Grisaia series. * Muv-Luv Trilogy. Goes from happy and fluffy slice of life ...... to mech combat against an alien invasion. Emotional feels and trauma galore..... Other Chuuni VNs I havn't read, but are on my future read list.... * Dengeki Stryker * The Shadows of Pygmalion * Tokyo Babel * Fatal Twelve

I don't know what exactly went wrong for you, because in this (incomplete) playthrough in japanese, the voices kept going well into the second act: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcETwoMH25C-EatAEUQ3GO8tti7eTjdvH On the VN itself: i liked it a lot more than you did, but it was disappointing considering how ambitious it looked. Also, the promotional material on it was seriously dishonest, showing scenes from the last few hours of the game. I thought all that action was gonna be on the first half of it.

Ah, another man of culture. Jokes aside, I still don't understand why the writers didn't give her a route as she had potential with her whole "I really don't feel whole if I don't work on airplanes, so I really have no interest in romance" and how falling for the MC could have easily seen some sort of character development with becoming a different person and such. As for your route list, I think you'll enjoy Hikari's and Mimari's routes, but Nahoko's really isn't good, which is why I gave this VN a lower rating. (Along with the fact of no Saiko route!)

He's machine-translating, LOL. Don't just encourage every single project out there

The remake features high quality artwork in higher resolution, lots of effects and animations, and full voice-acting. The H-scenes are intact, the CGs were only slightly censored. It's also the same translation, made by THE Makoto, with very slight changes. In conclusion, you should play the remake (15+ version).

I liked Shuffle. Hopefully, we get more Kaede.

Well good luck to the project, even though personally it's not my interest here (More translation project is always good).

What I remember about Shuffle is that it was scene-based--it jumps straight to the notable moments, much like an anime. This is likely one of the reasons it is popular in the West. Many games try to fill out each day from the protagonist's perspective, from when he gets up to when he goes to bed. It's very difficult to tell a compelling narrative like this unless your protagonist or setting are extremely unique and you can make each moment meaningful and fascinating. Most attempts fail.

That's very interesting! In contrast to this SPIRAL! thing they released some time ago, this actually 'looks' like Shuffle. Those are clearly Sia and Nerine on the cover page. I guess it certainly helps that the original artists are actually drawing the VN this time and aren't just 'assisting with school uniform design' and leaving the character designs to a loli artist from Da Capo. Maybe... there is even a chance for my favorite character Ai (my avatar) from the Nerine fan disc to be included. The list of writers actually looks pretty impressive. They have Ou Jackson and Higashinosuke on board, the main writers of Oretachi and Tsuriotsu which are Navel's most highly regarded works. I hope they'll keep the the two Da Capo writers from messing things up. That was certainly one of the main reasons it got popular both in Japan and in the west. It's rating isn't high, but there aren't that many VN's with more than 3000 votes on VNDB. Popularity isn't just about a high rating but also about the vote count. Shuffle's main strength was arguably its simplicity, so it's not surprising that the rating isn't high. It's the same with Nekopara - huge popularity and high vote count, but the rating is below 7. I also appreciate that Shuffle was a somewhat fast-paced moege - in the worst case it at least didn't overstay its welcome. Many moeges nowadays are real slice of life monsters with huge amounts of filler text that unfortunately have the tendency to bore me to death. Though Shuffle did have an interesting setting, so I think there's also more potential in it than just a simple moege if they want to.

It's a pretty well known game in Japan. There's a reason why Navel has been milking the series with fandisks and expanded versions for so long. (Heck, their most recent game, Spiral! Is also set in the same universe.) Sure took them long enough to make the actual sequel, though. As for the votes from western fans goes, there's been many different releases of Shuffle in the west, none of them all that great, with the most recent one being both censored, and having a poor translation. The first MG release also had a rather shoddy translation, and their fixed version is no longer on sale, due to license issues. Not to mention, the west hasn't been able to play the "full" version of shuffle, "Essense+", which is by far the best way to experience the game, with tons of added routes and content, as well as an expanded scenario for the core game. Yes, he passed away in 2016. He is credited on the sequel's website as the series' "creator". It's possible he had some notes or something that the current writers can go off, who knows. But, the writing team will be different, ofc.

Greetings everyone, Continuing my mad experiments with various game art styles, I’ve got some pixel art planets and space rocks here: ART- SPACE https://soundimage.org/art-space/ They live toward the bottom of the page, so make sure to scroll down. As always, feel free to edit and modify as needed. Enjoy!

If you're traveling in big cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, people in service occupations will generally know enough English that you'll get by just fine as a tourist. But, the normal level of English among people outside service occupations is quite frankly atrocious. Their knowledge of the language is limited to being able to say their name, "sorry", "thank you" and hello. That's pretty much it. But, if you're worried about booking hotels and what not, you shouldn't be. At least major hotels in large cities have staff that speaks English quite well. Restaurants too, depending on where you're eating. And you can ofc just point at the menu when ordering, and making a reservation isn't that hard if you go in person. If you plan on living in Japan, though, not knowing any Japanese will definitely mean you'll have a hard time, as most people simply don't know much English. Tourists will generally manage, as they aren't staying for too long, and tend to stick with popular tourist attractions where people are used to foreigners, but... yeah, the general level is terrible. So, if you're going for something other than tourism, learn at least some basic Japanese. Trust me, you'll need it. Every Japanese friend I have says the same thing. "I want to get better at English, but..." It's very hard for them, for a number of reasons. To just list a few: bad teachers, an overall bad approach to learning the language from schools in general, and a lack of motivation due to the difficulty both from teachers and students. Reminds me of this one time I was having lunch with some friends at uni, and I asked them what they could say in English. One girl at the table thought hard about it for a good 5 seconds, then said "this is... a apple!"' それだけWW (That's it, lol) I did not have it in me to correct her "a" to "an", lol. She later also seemed to remember how to say "my name is Shiho", but yeah, you get the idea, lol.

And so, today I finished Saki no Love Love Honeymoon. It was great. This fandisc for Yukizakura is exactly what it says on the tin - Yuuji's and Saki's summer trip to one southern island - in kind of "pre-honeymoon", as it is set between their engagement and Saki's route ending. Pretty short, but sweet. Somehow, it has put me into extraordinarily good mood. It reminded me how great heroine Saki was (there were many moments where I just wanted to hug her), and her relationship with Yuuji is amazing as well. I loved how often they were totally in phase, understanding each other. Their conversations about future were nice too. Whole game is filled with love - including 2 h-scenes. Most of the game is narrated from Saki's point of view - interesting change. Also, it's kind of "crossover episode", as side characters (Yoshioka family) and setting (Matsukawa Island) come from another D.O. VN - Uminomichi. (which I added to my backlog ) I think I could rate this small side story even a bit higher than main game, and give it 8/10. Also, I have to say that, for what it's worth, I found it much easier to read than ToHeart. Like I said in my previous post, for my next VN I'm going to go back to the translated world, and read Hitotsuba, I think.