OK, a quick little lesson on the meaning of ???. Judging by sentences you’ve constructed previously, I’m guessing you already know what particles are and the function they serve to some extent. As you may know, for one category of adjectives you use the particle ? before the noun to which they apply. Well, here is a bit of trivia for you: these adjectives are based on nouns. (The other category, which always ends in ?, are based off of verbs.) Why do I bring up this trivia you may ask? The reason is that the ? in my sentence separates a noun (??) from a particle acting like a noun (?). Basically, the particle ? (which is often shortened to ? in common speech) in my sentence is equivalent to adding, “It is a fact that” before stating something in English. As for ?, it is a particle used at the end of sentences. It has many uses, but in my sentence it adds emphasis. I’m not sure what games you have, but in Crescendo there is a great example of this construction if you listen for it in a conversation between Kaho and Kyoko about Ryo (in a flashback if I recall correctly):
Eh no, I still haven’t really figured it all out yet and I think this is really starting to confuse me with all the extra kanji and stuff. I do appreciate the help though…
But please, no more or else…
Posting this ‘cos I got no good ol’ yandere piccie:
Don’t make me show you my “teeth”. :twisted: (just joking… not serious)
Off topic, but to illustrate why formal classes aren’t much good for learning to read eroges, I had a look at the exam paper for an ‘advanced’ Japanese unit at a university. Some of the questions involve writing words like ??? and ??? (context implies that it’s ??) in kanji, and providing hiragana readings for words like ??, ??, ?? and ???. With that level of ‘advanced’ (3rd year) Japanese, you wouldn’t be able to read the simplest nukige or even a 20-30 minute free eroge without running into hundreds of unknown kanji and words, whereas I’m sure anyone learning via the eroge method would be able to answer those questions within the first 6 months.
I don’t think it’s probable to even read eroge (unless it’s a really easy title) after just 6 months of studying Japanese on your own with no background to start with… And also do note that not all curricula at universities are the same. I’m surprised they haven’t covered such an easy word as ??..
Yeah, I was referring to really easy titles, such as Yami no Koe 1 (100% dialogue, full voicing for every line (bar 20 or so), simple writing style, quite short), which I think I started a few months after beginning to learn Japanese. The point you make about differences between curricula is true, especially since this doesn’t look like one of the stronger ones out there. 
I know I started reading eroge a lot earlier than 6 months after I really started learning Japanese - in fact, I started reading eroge simultaneously when I started learning. But, of course, I guess that doesn’t make clear what the starting point was.
My starting point was not ‘don’t know hiragana, don’t know katakana, haven’t heard or seen the language used before’. I knew hiragana, I knew katakana, I knew the number kanji, how to count, tell the time, I knew most of the standard greetings and conversational shibboleths. This was just mostly due to an odd trait I have of remembering this sort of thing. So yeah, I guess I technically started reading eroge about eight years after starting to learn Japanese. But most of that time wasn’t Japanese study- I didn’t care about the language at all, not having been that much into other Japanese media before I found eroge. It was forced upon me in compulsory schooling- as soon as I no longer had to take Japanese, I stopped.
Kind of regret that now wwwwwwwwwww (if I had some proper formal education in the subject I wouldn’t be in the situation where I find out that there’s actually a fairly consistent system behind verb conjugations in the language TWO YEARS after starting reading eroge - yes, that’s right, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you the difference between two different (positive) conjugations of the same verb unless they were extremely distinct in meaning)
While reading erogees may be a good way to improve your Japanese skills, it may also be a bit… focused.
I’m pretty sure I’m more able to recognize the kanjis used to, say, for instance, as a completely random example, describe the female body anatomy than the ones used in every day’s conversation by most Japanese people. :mrgreen:
I don’t think eroges are ‘focused’ at all-- in fact, the opposite. I’d say that eroge on the whole covers a far greater linguistic spectrum than your average web pages, newspapers, magazines, manga etc. In eroge you get to read technical manuals, books, poetry, old-fashioned writing, political discourse, songs, theses and a lot of very, very odd kinds of writing styles. To my knowledge there is nothing else that has so much fun with text. If you have to pick just one medium to learn all of the language from, pick eroge.
Actually, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned SRS. I’m using Anki to learn kana, currently.
To the OP, try reading this link. A friend of mine sent this.
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … to-fluency
I sort of hate SRS methods. I don’t learn anything well through repetition though.
Aha I see. It’s up to the OP to choose a method best suited for him, though. 
I failed my Japanese class in college. Still have the books and workbooks though and the eroge so I’m slowly learning. I highly recommend that if you do ever take a Japanese class that you set time aside to actually do it. Don’t be too distracted and do too many other things at the same time. It doesn’t work. Also I’ve found that classes tend to go over the material much too quickly. I think I’ve managed to learn best simply doing a study at home at my own pace schedule.It might not be the same for everyone but just a suggestion for anyone wishing to learn japanese. Be ready it’s a lot of work and you will need at least a few years before you can do much of anything with it.
:lol: .Actually no. Although my plea is that I was simply sick a lot and extremely busy taking 6 college classes, a member of student council (more of an obligation than a choice…needed the benefits), had to get volunteer time working in a school, working to pay for college, and being too far behind (with being sick the first 3 weeks of the semester (pneumonia) …my other classes did not suffer as much). I could never catch up and try what I might I ended up just not going to class anymore and focusing on the classes I needed for my major. I sacrificed one class for overall benefit of the others.Don’t regret it one bit.
Someone else I knew who was in it though had no excuse. They just dropped it halfway through and went back to their room to play video games on their 360.
Mind you if you do learn japanese on your own you’re going to have an awkward as hell time speaking to someone in the language, simply because you won’t know whether you are pronouncing the words correctly or even have the sentences in the right order and context. Although the internet is a fascinating place and learning the first year (or a semester in college) is quite possible with the numerous resources on the web…after that though it takes a thing called dedication.
Why would I need that to play eroge?
Besides, I can post on 2ch and get helpfully corrected any time I want =P
Ahaha. That’s the same post you gave me a few years back.
Statistically, the characters you are most likely to encounter in a given eroge.
It’s from combining my love for data mining with my love for eroge. =P I downloaded erogamescape’s SQL tables the other day + would like to get some interesting data out of that. So far the only interesting thing I found (and sort of expected already) is that a good themesong is often (though not always) indicative of a good eroge. Otherwise there’s mostly a lot of noise in the data so it’s hard to work with. I tried going through the list and tagging eroge I thought were particularly good and seeing if I could use that data to train a classifier to find more good eroge but wasn’t able to get anything more accurate than just saying ‘no’ to every title.