Hopper's volume 2: Snake vs Zombie

This Saturday, games developer Grasshopper Manufacture held the 2nd edition of its annual Hopper's festival. The festival was a one-day event in Club Asia in Shibuya, featuring talks by prominent video game developers and live music. While in one part of the venue the talks were held, live music was played on another stage elsewhere. Various Grasshopper goods such as their soundtrack CDs and signed copies of the book Hand in Killer7 were on sale at the event and seemed to be selling well.

Speakers included Tetsuya Mizuguchi (best known for the games Rez, Space Channel 5 and Lumines), Fumito Ueda (director and lead designer of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus), Keiichiro Toyama (director of Silent Hill and the Siren games) and Hifumi Kono (Steel Battalion).

The main event, Snake vs Zombie, was a joint talk by Konami's Hideo Kojima and Capcom's Shinji Mikami, and hosted by Grasshopper's own Goichi Suda, better known as Suda 51. For the non-gamers: Kojima is famous for his creation of the Metal Gear Solid series of games (the lead character of which is called Solid Snake, shown right on the flyer), and Mikami is best known for creating the Biohazard/Resident Evil games, which can be credited for re-popularizing the zombie-genre in both film and video games in recent years.
The two men were asked things such as how they first got to know each other's work; which films they watched recently (all seemed to like the TV show Lost) ; and to explain their jobs, which differed in that Mikami said he was more concerned with scheduling while Kojima is more hands-on with the game's (visual) design.

All the talks were very much of the talk-show type; informal discussions which were loosely lead by some questions. I didn't attend all the talks, as my Japanese is still quite limited, but I was just able to understand the main points they were talking about. A better-Japanese-speaking friend had come along, and some of my colleagues were also there, so I was able to get some translations as well.

Following the main event there was also a recording of Kojima's podcast, in which members of the audience could ask questions to the speakers present.

The evening was concluded with a performance of the Grasshopper sound team, which played tracks from games such as God Hand, Killer7 (the Handsomemen theme song) and the upcoming No More Heroes. I can't be certain, but I think I heard the Grasshopper sound team announce that a Killer7 soundtrack CD is in the works. I also think I heard Suda 51 announce that one of their earliest games, The Silver Case is due to be appear for the Nintendo DS in the future.

Standing most of the day while trying to concentrate on the Japanese being spoken made the whole event slightly too tiring for us to go to the "after-party" nearby, which was some kind of Lumines Xbox360 Tournament party hosted by Mizuguchi and Microsoft. Still, it had been an interesting and fun day - I'll be back next year, when I should be able to follow the talks a little better!

So, how's your Japanese? Episode 2.

Learning Japanese may be a mammoth task, but thankfully we no longer live in prehistoric times and there is of plenty of technology to make the learning and communication a little easier.
(Terms explained in the previous post on Japanese language are written in italics).

Web-based translators such as AltaVista's Babelfish have been around for years. I've found that Google's translator for Japanese-to-English is the most reliable, giving me the least "err-I-can't-display-this-page" errors. You can set Google's translator as a link in your browser's toolbar (Google toolbar not required), making a translated page just one click away. Sadly though, this does not work with Gmail, so I still have to copy-paste my Japanese e-mails into the translator page.
Another good translator is Eigo-Navi, which shows both the original and the translated text on screen, which can be handy at times. Sure, with all these translators the English looks like by Yoda it was written, but understand it we can, hrrrmm?

I've also been using my Nintendo DS with DS Rakuhiki Jiten. This is a relatively simple dictionary application that's very easy to use, thanks to the touch screen.
It does require one to know how to write a word phonetically using kana. If I know that, I can look up the kanji for it and read the meaning in English. I never use it for English-to-Japanese translation though, because the result is always written in kanji, and not how to pronounce that. There's also a DS Kanji Dictionary, but I have yet to check that one out.

Finally, there's LexiKAN, an excellent piece of software for learning to read and write kanji. I've only recently discovered it, and I was truly surprised at how good it is. Using a mouse or Wacom tablet (which I strongly recommend) you draw the kanji, either on a blank canvas or by tracing a light-grey image. The software immediately gives you feedback while drawing each stroke, ensuring you draw them in the correct length, order and direction. This is very effective in helping you memorise how to draw each character. If you work on paper, you just end up copying the character you drew before, not forcing you to think. LexiKAN also lets you view a little animation of each character being drawn, which can be useful for the more complicated ones or where the stroke order deviates from the standard rules.

The full version of LexiKAN (only US$29) contains writing instructions for all the 2000-odd kanji required for the highest level JLPT; a dictionary which lets you search on meaning, reading (pronounciation) or a few strokes you've drawn; a fully customizable flashcard system which lets you create your own lessons and tests, and much more. Bargain!
But most of all, it's fun! I blast through a number of flashcard lessons each day for practice, and I can clearly see my kanji knowledge improving. I'd buy this again if it ever came out on the DS (hint to developers/wishful thinking).