Just a quick off-topic question, but how did you guys learn Japanese? I've been trying to find where to start for some time now, but I haven't really found a way to do that yet.
When I first started learning, there weren't nearly as many resources for learning Japanese online as there are today. You were pretty much limited to one very basic lesson that you'd see in a textbook, and a few web pages (this was before proper blogs) by angry Japanese majors explaining how confusing the grammar is hahaha.
In my opinion, if you want a kind-of 'fast track' to learning Japanese so that you can play games, you'll have to start with the fundamentals. That means learning the hiragana, katakana, and how kanji is used in Japanese (I know some real-life beginners courses that don't expound on kanji, so sometimes it's just better to look this stuff up yourself).
Second, find some real basic, boring lessons like, "Eating at a Restaurant" or "Visiting the Post Office". Books you can find at the library are filled with this kind of stuff, just read through a bunch of them until you have a simple understanding of how Japanese works (this could take a month or so, learning anything new is a commitment after all)
Next, you'll simply want to expand your vocabulary. It would be great to learn more grammar first, but without formal classes you'll probably end up learning your grammar on a case-by-case basis (though there are great grammar websites out there now, like Tae-Kim's Japanese site..). To learn more vocabulary, get some Japanese comics (I'm guessing you like One Piece?) or games where you'd feel comfortable looking up each separate kanji, and then each compound (combination of two or more kanji).
The difficulty (or simplicity?) of reading Japanese in games is that many games use very different language. Games like Persona 3/4 might use normal modern Japanese, while something with samurai or knights in it would use different/archaic levels of formality. Games with 'delinquent' characters use a lot of Yakuza-style slang, and games with 'rural folks' use yet another set of vocab to make those characters stand out.
Of course, that's only if you want to learn how to read Japanese. Speaking, writing, and all that good stuff (singing?) would require a different focus altogether. But this is a video game site, so I just assumed you were talking about reading comprehension.
QUOTE(phoenixgoddess27 @ Mar 31 2011, 06:31 AM) On another note: Shiva is a HUGE perv XD There's a quest called "The Secret of Jiggling!?" but for all of the innocent people out there, I'll make it "The Secret of Trembling!?"