• lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    21 hours ago

    I don’t even take lessons yet but I play shōgi (Japanese chess) and therefore have contact with native speakers and a lot of material is in Japanese (not to mention the very pieces are kanjis). So I did what everyone would do: I downloaded a bunch of apps from F-Droid to learn Kana and Kanji and procrastinate on deepening my knowledge in the future

      • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        16 hours ago

        Forget the one on the left. It hasn’t been played by any significant number of people for literal centuries. Today’s shōgi is 9x9 and has 8 district pieces which isn’t much more than western chess with 8x8 and 6 distinct pieces

        • Malgas@beehaw.org
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          16 hours ago

          Okay but have you considered that dai shogi has a drunk elephant piece which promotes to prince which, naturally, becomes a new king should your current one be captured?

          (I’ve only actually played standard modern shogi, but reading about these bonkers historical variants is a lot of fun.)

          • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            16 hours ago

            True, the world building is great. They don’t make this kind of games anymore. Imagine a modern protagonist with this background story:
            “I was an elephant but so drunk, I traveled to the end of the world. There I kissed a peasant girl and turned into a prince so when I went back, I was the king.”

    • Zyratoxx@fedia.ioOP
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      21 hours ago

      I always find Katakana the easiest bc of the words being (mostly English) loanwords that got kanafied.

      • lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        21 hours ago

        I never thought about it that way. I find hiragana easier because I started with it and I think there are more similar katakana than hiragana but both have their share