2006年01月22日 日曜日

Do You Have Any Rock CDs?

by Justin Hall

Japan Abroad

A series of four ads from Nintendo touches on the difficult time Japanese people might have in English language dominant environments. As a foreigner who lived in Japan and often nodded and said "thank you" because I didn't want to trouble people too much, I can relate to these short videos. They've done a good brief job staging the yearning awkwardness of trans-cultural communication.

Towards what end? To promote some brain-training games that can help you with foreign language skills. Portable gaming devices are becoming powerful enough to provide translation services - a great reason to justify the purchasing and carrying of these "toys". The Sony PSP has a product with a talking bird that will say things like "Where is a cheap hotel?" through the PSP speakers. The Nintendo DS, judging from this ad, uses the touch-screen input to allow people to practice their English handwriting.

Posted by Justin Hall at 2006年01月22日 22:40



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月, 4 10, 2006, @ 15:17
Pretending to understand?
› from hightext

Some great commercials from Nintendo promoting their English teaching games for the Nintendo DS, showing Japanese doing 'wakatteru furi' (pretending to understand) For those who can't read Japanese, there are four clips, accessed by clicking the links ... More »