Japan consumed by Pokemania
Not so long after (or before, should you live in Europe) Nintendo gave the west Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, they gave Japan the real new titles in the neverending fad: Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. And, to put it bluntly, they have eaten the Land of the Rising Yen.
Not only did they sell over 1.5 million units combined in their first week (surpassing New Super Mario Bros. as the fastest-selling game there) but it caused the DS Lite to sell over 96% more units this week, selling ten times as much as that other handheld.
The Japanese packshots
This game is set to be the best Pokemon in the series’ 10-year run, adding wi-fi, extended battle animations, and psuedo-3D landscapes to a handful of new Pokemans and the return of the day/night cycle, so it’s really no wonder it’s doing so well with they hype it’s getting. (Pokemon is after all the killer app of any Nintendo handheld.) The DS Lite sold kind of like this when it launched in Japan, and sold almost as well when it hit the west. Will Pokemon do the same way, or is this one of those Japanese quirks we all know and love so well? We’ll find out come the game’s release in 2007, and you can of course expect a review from Nintendic.
…So how exactly do the Japanese read English characters, unless they’re bilingual? It seems that Japanese people would be confused by the Nintendo logo, “The Pokémon Company,” and even the Nintendo DS logo, unless they could also read English? It seems strange that Nintendo (a Japanese company) would use English characters in its logo if their native audience couldn’t even read it.
And how will Japanese interperet “Wii” when it is released? It barely makes sense phonetically in America, let alone places like France, where similar sounds are spelled “Oui.”
Nearly every Japanese logo has some English in it. America is really, really bad at learning a second language. Other countries are fairly good at it, we’ve got an admin staff full of Dutch guys who can prove that.
Welcome to the 21st century.
Much has changed since you went into hibernation.
All Japenese know the Roman alphabet. When they start school they learn their two alphabets,the roman alphabet (this one), then spend the rest of their schooling life learning the over 2000 kanji deemed nessicary by the goverment.They are taught english, but honestly the Japanese teaching meathods are retarded. It’s all memorization. They never learn structure or how to form sentences on their own. So yes, they can read it, and in fact english words and phrases are all over the place, but they are always oddly worded. For instance, the exit sign at my favorite internet cafesays,”Thank you for the presence. Set it up again.”