Blog Post #8

For this blog post, I will discuss my time starting Yakuza: 0, an action-RPG from the popular Yakuza franchise. Video games were a new medium for me to be exposed to the Japanese language, and I chose this series partially for its strong narrative and cinematic storytelling, which would give me plenty of dialogue to listen to. The start of the game was pretty exposition-heavy, as the game was introducing me to the cast of characters, the dynamics between them, and setting up the inciting incident that will jump-start the overarching plot. I had a fun time reading random bits of katakana and hiragana on the neon signage as I walked around Kamurocho, a fictional district in Tokyo, and could even walk into a few コービニ to buy various food and drinks to heal/improve my character. I felt I was still very reliant on subtitles to understand what was being said the vast majority of the time, thanks to my small vocabulary and the speed at which the characters spoke. I will most certainly keep playing this game during the summer, and it will be a cool journey to see how my understanding of the Japanese language improves as I play further into the series.