Lesson 1


Konnichiwa! I had some free time, so I figured I'd teach y'all what I know about Japanese.

First of all, Japanese is not my first language, nor have I had any "proper" form of education in it. Everything I know I learned from Video Games (mainly Pokémon), Anime, and Manga.

Anyway, first I'll tell you about the four types of characters (letters) used in Japanese.
There's Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji (the hardest to learn), and Romaji (what I've been using here).

Hiragana are the main kind of characters used in Japanese. They are used for spelling regular words, like "Konnichiwa", "Sayonara", and "Arigato".

Katakana are very similar to Hiragana, they're just used for different things. For example, the Japanese names of every Pokémon character (Human or Pokémon) are spelled with Katakana, while things like items and moves (and most of the dialogue) are usually spelled with Hiragana.
Katakana is also used when spelling foreign words (such as English words) in Japanese.

Kanji characters are similar to Chinese (in fact, most of them ARE Chinese), in that a single character/letter can be a whole word. Obviously, that makes learning them very difficult, as there are at least hundreds of them (probably thousands).

Romaji is when you spell a Japanese word or name with "Roman" letters (the same letters used in English, and many other European languages). Whenever I spell out a Japanese word with regular English letters, that's Romaji.

Anyway, the next lesson will be sort of odd. I'll teach you how to enter Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji characters into an Internet search. Sayonara!

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Lesson 2

Konnichiwa! As I explained before, there are 4 types of characters/letters used in Japanese.
Only one of them (Romaji) can be entered on a normal keyboard
(or an English-language 2DS's touchscreen keyboard, for that matter).
However, there is a way around this (although it doesn't seem to work here).

You see, there are these "secret codes" you can enter into a search, that will be converted into Japanese (or Chinese, and probably other languages, too) letters.

Now, you're probably wondering:
"Why would I want to do that if I can just type it with English letters?".
Well, aside from just wanting to learn a new language, it also allows you to search for Japanese websites. If you're really into Anime or Manga (like me), it's pretty nice to be able to do that.

Anyway, here's how. First, you need to know how to spell the name/word in Japanese. Depending on what you're looking for, this can be really easy, or really hard.

For simplicity's sake, let's say you want to look up a Pokémon in Japanese. The easiest way to get the Japanese name of anything in Pokémon (including the Japanese names of Trainers, Items, Places, Moves, Abilities, etc.) is to look it up on Bulbapedia. Usually, the Japanese name is at the top of the page, written in both Romaji and Kana (generic term for all Japanese letters), right next to the English name.

Once you know that, it's just a matter of knowing (and properly entering) the codes.
The best way to learn the codes is to use an English to Japanese translation website (I use Eudict.com).

In the next lesson, I will teach you how to do this. Sayonara!

http://www.google.com/search?client=ds&hl=en&rls=com.nintendo.ds:2+US&oe=utf8&ie=UTF-8&q=%E3%83%9D%E3%82%B1%E3%83%A2%E3%83%B3
(This should search for the word "Pokémon", in Japanese.)

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Lesson 3

Konnichiwa! This time, I'll teach you how to get the "secret codes" to enter Japanese text into Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, or any other search engine!

It should be noted that while I do this on my 2DS, I believe these codes would work on a 3DS, a DSi, a PC, or a Smartphone (or anything else with a web browser).

Now, first you need to make sure you have room for a bookmark. The only way to enter the codes is to either type them into the URL, or type them into the URL of a bookmarked page (such as a bookmarked internet search page).

Now, as for getting the codes. First, go to the Translation site (in my case, I find Eudict.com works well). Make sure its set to convert English to Japanese Kanji. Then, type a word containing letters you want codes for (it's simplest, of course, if you actually want to search for a normal word), then have it translate it. On the left it should show a list of English words, and on the right it should show you them in Kana.

Next is the tricky part. Click on the Japanese word, and it will start trying to translate it into English. Before it finishes loading the page, either add it to your bookmarks, or hit the "i" button in your 3DS browser. If you bookmarked it (or hit the "i" button), you should see a bunch of stuff like "%E3%82%B8" in the URL. These are the codes. Each one converts to a Japanese letter.

Now, you can either:
A. Enter the codes into an already bookmarked search page.
B. Type a search website's address (with the codes in it) into the URL slot.
C. Simply enter the codes into a search normally, bookmark the search results, go into your bookmarks, and delete the "25"s after each "%". After doing that, the codes should work right.

Anyway, that's all for this lesson (and for today). Sayonara!

https://eudict.com/?lang=jpkeng&word=%E7%AB%9C%E7%A5%9E
(This should do a Japanese to English translation of the word "Ryuujin", which means "Dragon God". The Draconids call Rayquaza "Ryuujin-sama" in the Pokémon Adventures Manga, BTW.)