Japanese language & culture blog

As you may’ve noticed, the NihongoUp site was going through some massive changes during the past two months. Well, I think that the site finally reached a state when it can be safely announced to the general public. I’ll leave the “beta” notice in the header for a little longer (primarily because the site still isn’t fully compatible with Internet Explorer), but overall, there shouldn’t be any major bugs or missing features. Nevertheless, I’m still working hard on getting everything in the best shape possible so if you have any suggestions or feature requests, please let me know.

For a general overview…
Read more » The new NihongoUp is live!

NihongoUp 1.3.0 is finally here and besides bugfixes it also brings a long awaited JLPT 2 kanji mode! As always: Most of the updates are based on your suggestions, so please continue leaving feedback at the NihongoUp feedback page

First of all, Happy Easter! Secondly, as you may have noticed, many updates to NihongoUp branded projects were deployed last week, and especially today.

Japan news aggregator

The biggest announcement is the launch of a new NihongoUp subsite—Japan news aggregator. The site is a news aggregator ala popurls with several sections to choose from depending on your interests. If you have any suggestions on how I could improve the site, or what resources I should add, please contact me!

NihongoUp Desktop

The desktop version of the game was updated with a new grammar mode allowing you to learn Japanese transitive and intransitive verbs. It’s a unique feature…
Read more » Updates, Updates, Easter, Updates

A new update is here, and it brings a new grammar game mode called Transitivity. “What the heck is a transitivity mode?”, you’ll ask. Well, as you may’ve heard, in Japanese as well as in many other languages, there are two types of verbs; transitive and intransitive, 他動詞 (たどうし) and 自動詞 (じどうし). This new mode will allow you to learn pairs of transitive & intransitive verbs and when to use which type. I’ll be writing a more detailed post about transitivity in the Japanese language so stay tuned and subscribe to the RSS.

1.2.9 changelog:

• Transitivity grammar game mode
• Minor UI changes
• Minor bugfixes

As always: Most of the updates are based on your suggestions, so please continue leaving feedback at the…
Read more » Game update: NihongoUp 1.2.9

A new update is here, bringing  some long awaited features, as well as many bug fixes and UI improvements. Here’s the full changelog:

• JLPT 1 Vocabulary mode
• Vocabulary answers can now use kanji instead of kana (see Settings)
• Kana modes scoring/difficulty algorithm was changed
• The correct answer is shown when the balloons fall out of the screen
• The correct answer is now displayed 2x longer than before
• “Continue” button renamed to “Continue Trial”
• Music is now muted in the pause menu
• Several new particle sentences
• Many bug fixes

As always, I would like to remind that you are welcome to submit your suggestions and bug reports at the NihongoUp feedback page

Version 1.2.4 tries to address some of the issues and ideas reported at Get Satisfaction. Here’s the changelog:

• In the kanji and particles modes, when you answer wrong, the correct answer is now shown in the original sentence
• The score panel design was update and the individual statistics are now clearer and easier to understand
• Score is now calculated according to the selected game duration (now you can’t improve you high score by playing longer)

I hope that you’ll like the improvements and if you have any other ideas, definitely post them at the aformentioned feedback page!…
Read more » Game Update: NihongoUp 1.2.4

In the past two days there were two minor updates released. Here’s the changelog for 1.2.2:

• Several bugfixes
• Several sentence corrections
• ん can be now written as xn and as n’
• じ can be now written as zi
• Nihongoup was renamed to NihongoUp (uppercase “U”)
• Logo in the game is now identical to that on the web

Some problems accessing the trial version of the game appeared shortly after this update. Please update to 1.2.3 and everything should work as expected…
Read more » Game Update: NihongoUp 1.2.2

This is by far the biggest update since the release and it brings JLPT 3 mode as well as many other features, updates and bug fixes to my Japanese learning game. Here’s a detailed changelog:

• JLPT 3 sentences list
• Settings, Help and Credits panels
• Customizable sounds and music volume
• Customizable game session length
• Sentence vs. single-word display
• Updated user interface and icons
• Sentences are better visible now
• Many minor updates and fixes

I really hope that you’ll enjoy this update and if you have any suggestions on what I should add in the future, don’t hesitate to contact me!…
Read more » Game Update: Nihongoup 1.2.0

The game was updated to version 1.0.2! This update features several corrections in the sentence list and, as suggested by @Beta_guy, there are no more duplicate answer balloons in the Particles mode (you won’t see several balloons with the same particle anymore). The game should automatically trigger an autoupdate message on the next launch…
Read more » Game Update: Nihongoup 1.0.2

Just a short notice that a small update numbered as 1.0.1 has been uploaded. The update adds support for input from the numeric keyboard as suggested by @MatthewGOrlando. The game should automatically trigger an autoupdate message on the next launch…
Read more » Game Update: Nihongoup 1.0.1