So, I have idolmaster 2,an iphone,and small knowledge on Hiragana

[Heattokun]

As the topic says,I have:
Idolmaster on my PS3
An iPhone(more on this later)
and a knowledge on most of the hiragana(i know whats what,but sometimes i derp out on it since my hand writing is pure and total crap when it comes to memory..unless its something purely trivial. like megaman or the Hex values for the Sonic the Fighters player characters for some godawful reason). Katakana on the way
So, heres my two questions:
Lets say I have a dictionary so,if i dont know a word I can look it up. Exactly how many characters will I have to absorb before I can actually understand the game? (Im pretty good at the sentance structure stuff already)
And second: To anyone who has a knowledge of japanese - and preferably an iProduct, is there any Japanese to English dictionary apps?

[chikorita157]

I have been studying Japanese for almost a year and I think you need more than just Elementary Japanese. I say to have a basic understanding, one should at least finish Intermediate or even Advanced Level Japanese.

Also, you can't really understand what they saying just by looking up the words as the sentence structure is completely different from English. This is because Japanese uses a Subject-Object-Verb sentence structure. For example...

アリスさんはりんごを食べた。
(Alice ate an apple.)

Also, the text is automatic, so you have to pause the Game. Still, to better enjoy the game, one should at least have some formal lessons or self-study from lessons.

As for the dictionary, I use Kotoba (which is under a different name now). But, if you are interested in learning the language, Genki I and II is  good text books to learn from... Just be aware that a mix of short forms and polite forums are used in the game.

[Heattokun]

Let me break down the quote and replys into some several parts

I have been studying Japanese for almost a year and I think you need more than just Elementary Japanese. I say to have a basic understanding, one should at least finish Intermediate or even Advanced Level Japanese.

Let me rephrase that: I have a basic understanding,but right now on the level of Stupid VS Grand Master,my current level of the japanese language is ばか がい(insert ji here,don't know the character for it)ん

Also, you can't really understand what they saying just by looking up the words as the sentence structure is completely different from English. This is because Japanese uses a Subject-Object-Verb sentence structure. For example...

アリスさんはりんごを食べた。
(Alice ate an apple.)

Already know this. I know the subject, topic, object, location, and i think one other pointer somewhere(possesive iirc).

Also, the text is automatic, so you have to pause the Game.

I know this one,as i used to play SP.

Still, to better enjoy the game, one should at least have some formal lessons or self-study from lessons.

Agreed.

As for the dictionary, I use Kotoba (which is under a different name now). But, if you are interested in learning the language, Genki I and II is  good text books to learn from... Just be aware that a mix of short forms and polite forums are used in the game.

Hmm,I was hoping for a more app-friendly "type in japanese word->get meaning" sort of thing but I suppose this works too. Just saying app friendly cause,well..you know
I'm running low on cash since I imported the game and my iPhone is jailbroken fancy

[chikorita157]

Hmm,I was hoping for a more app-friendly "type in japanese word->get meaning" sort of thing but I suppose this works too. Just saying app friendly cause,well..you know

Of course there is no easy way since Japanese uses Kanji. Unless you know the On/Kun readings for each character, you would have to resort to radicals. The good thing is that Chinese characters are built off from simpler characters. For instance, 刀 (knife) and 八 makes 分 (means divide, minute). Once you get the character, just type in the conjugation (if any) and you should get the definition.

[animagic4u]

I think you'll learn some kanji and some basic expressions with idolm@ster (Through personal experience I've learned many kanji and expressions from it) but let me warn you that playing a game by line by line translation is completely miserable.
If you want to fully bring yourself into the story of the game and have complete knowledge you're going to just have to learn Japanese. (Trust me, a little goes a far way, I've only just started learning and I understand so many things in im@s already).

However I don't think it's necessary at all to know Japanese to play im@s 2. Please enjoy the game either way.

[Daverost]

Learn hiragana and katakana. If you watch a lot of subbed anime or play a lot of undubbed games, you should be able to get by really well with just that level of reading and some familiarity with common words and phrases. iM@S isn't particularly complicated to read because so many of the idol industry terms are English anyway.

[Cael K.]

You can power through, but well... I won't pull my punches, you're going to be digging trenches and fighting the long fight if you're coming in without too much knowledge of Japanese. What is essential is a grasp of grammar, including what particles mean. Everything else is just a dictionary look-up, but knowing (or being able to guess) the stroke order for your kanji is a real big plus since some (many? almost all?) handwriting detection algorithms take that into account. There are general rules you can use for guessing stroke order, though.

Wikipedia knows everything, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_order

Don't worry, I've been there myself and you can learn so much... even better, get some gut feeling about how the language works, it's just you'll have to go through a proportional amount of effort to do it. My advice once again: start with grammar, start with particles, and toss in conjugations. If you know how the words relate to each other, you can use a dictionary and figure out the exact meaning of what you're reading. If you know a bunch of words and not how they relate to each other... well, dictionaries aren't going to solve that.

Honestly though, Im@s is pretty tame compared to some series as far as complexity goes.

[animagic4u]

Honestly though, Im@s is pretty tame compared to some series as far as complexity goes.

At least it's not a Steins Gate. XP

[Elixir]

Haha, Steins;Gate in Japanese is... yeah.

I think you're good to go. Enough to understand the flow of the game, perhaps not the whole side-story the PS3 version has but that's pretty forgettable anyway.

http://forum.project-imas.com/index.php/topic,1136.0.html