Philip Seyfi sent me an e-mail asking me to check out his Adobe Air application Nihongoup (for a long time I thought its name was some sort of weird misspelling, or a fish reference, which of course we approve of Ha! Logo is now NihongoUp! Don’t say we never did anything for you). He hooked me up with a free copy (it’s normally $4.99) as well as five more to give away to all of you. You’ll have to keep reading to figure out how you can win.

Nihongoup is nice and simple and runs very smoothly. When you start up the application, you have four choices: Katakana, Hiragana, Kanji, and particles.

Hiragana and Katakana:

In this game, balloons with different hiragana (or katakana, if you’re playing that game) come down. Before they fall all the way down, you have to type in the corresponding romaji to make them disappear. My only complaint is that there aren’t enough zombies in this typing game. I suppose we’ll have to settle. If you’re learning hiragana or katakana, this is definitely an easy way to study. It’s not particularly exciting, but it’s better than a lot of other options out there.

Kanji:

In the kanji game, you get a sentence at the bottom with a highlighted section. You have to click on the balloon containing correct kanji to move on to the next one. I do wish more of the sentence was in kanji, but I guess it makes sense since the game is only available in JLPT 3 & 4 levels. According to the website JLPT 1 & 2 are coming soon, so I’ll be playing Nihongoup a bit more when those are released.

Particles:

The particles game is Nihongoup’s “ace up the sleeve.” I really like this idea. You get a sentence with a missing particle, and then four choices. You have to pick the correct one, and it’s a lot harder than I thought! I think I need to practice my particles a bit more. Just like the kanji sentence, I wish more of the sentence was in kanji (perhaps with furigana, for beginners?). All hiragana is difficult to read, even with the little spaces.

Really, though, if you’re going to buy Nihongoup, this is the section to do it for. I haven’t seen too many other resources out there that do particle practice, and Nihongoup does a good job at it. Perhaps it would be good with my Japanese Particles Cheatsheet?

Overall Impressions:

Nihongoup is a good application, it runs well, and does some neat things for Japanese language practice. There’s some room for improvement, which is fine because it’s an early product, and I know improvements are being made by the developer. It’s kind of one of those things where it’s really good that it’s simple, but has room for a little more (I think?). I do wish the sentences were easier to read (more kanji, please!), and I’d also like to see more settings for different difficulty levels within each section (faster speeds, etc).

You can buy this application for $4.99, which I think is a pretty good deal. I wouldn’t buy it if it was any higher, but it’s worth the money if you use it a lot.

How can YOU win a copy?

I’m allowed to give away five copies of the game (thanks to the Nihongoup folks). If you want a copy, though, you have to work for it a little bit… though not that much.

What you have to do: Leave a comment telling me why you think you should get a copy of this sexy software. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux, so everyone should be able to get in on it. If you leave a video comment, you might get extra points (or lose extra points if you’re a sad clown). Poems might get you extra points. Godzilla references may help you as well. Other creative comments are also welcome. I’m just going to choose the ones that I like the best, so yep, bribery works as well. And tweets… Tweets are good.

When will the winners be chosen? Pretty much when I feel like it… Probably sometime in the next week. If I see a comment I really really like, though, I may mark it as a winner early by responding to it. You never know.

How will I get my prize? I’ll send your e-mail to someone who will get you a product key.

Off to the races! It’s time to learn Japanese!