Nintendo DS game console helps spur interest in English in Japan classrooms

all will start well, then the game cards will be brought to school and games will be played at the back of the classroom while "two hamburgers" are ordered at the front...

I was in a school a couple years back where "notebooks" were carried by every student, a great revolution to many classes (not just Engrish)... then the boys (and girls) started downloading and distributing porn... kids will be kids... the computers all disappeared the next school year.

Japanese students need video games to help them pay attention and actually study something properly.

A giggly class of 32 seventh-graders used plastic pens to spell words like “gland” and “member” on the touch panel screen—the key feature of the hit console—following an electronic voice from the machine.

I think this is probably closer to the truth.

I wish they would make a Japanese learning game as well. I would be hooked to my DS.

Nightflesh, there are hundreds of these

Sounds like an game developed for the staff at Mosburger.

Talk about recycling. This must be the sixth time I've seen this story in two years.

I haven't really seen them advertise too much to see the "hundreds" of them. My bad.

Come to think about it, all of the games learning Japanese have been for Japanese people or for people who have already studied Japanese. There is not one game that has been made for English speaking people trying to learn Japanese from basic. Once they make that game, more people with a DS (or soon to be) will want to learn Japanese.