This is going to be a guide about playing Dragon Quest IX in its native Japanese on the Nintendo DS. Why? Because I love the series, and because I want to learn Japanese. The game itself serves as a great (if not somewhat challenging) introduction to the Japanese language.

The fact that the game has furigana (little characters above the kanji to tell you how it is pronounecd) make it much easier to look words up in a pocket dictionary. Additionally, there are spaces between the words, making it easier to translate everything word by word.

This guide is not meant to translate every speech by every NPC in the game, but rather is meant to help get you started playing the game, so it can be more enjoyable.