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Creating Custom Vocab Lists in Nihongo Quest

Nihongo Quest is able to be modified so that the player can create custom towns using their own vocabulary list. Once studied in the game, these words will also be added to the daily review challenge at Review Tower.

I highly suggest reading until the end before trying! The last section gives tips to make the process easier!

The basics of adding your own vocab into the game are simple. I will first explain the basic process, and then share some tips for how to add long lists of words into the game.

From there, you will see a few options. For now, let's learn how to add additional words.

You will then see a series of pop-up windows that will tell you to enter the vocabulary word, meanings, kanji readings, and example sentences.

From here, the basic idea is pretty simple. Enter your vocab words, meanings, kanji readings, and example sentences in order, separating each item in your list using two dashes (--).

Let's say you wanted to enter the words for dishwasher, apple, candle, TV, and soap.

First, put those words in Japanese in the first box. You would enter them like this: 食器洗い機--りんご--ろうそく--テレビ--石鹸. Then click "OK" to confirm.

Next, do the same thing with the meanings. dishwasher--apple--candle--TV--soap. 

Make sure you put the meanings in the same order as the vocabulary words. The first item on each list will all be connected by the game. If you are off by even one, everything on the list will not match up correctly, so be careful.

Next is Kanji readings. One important point: be sure to put a 0 for any words that do not have Kanji. So with our example of 食器洗い機--りんご--ろうそく--テレビ--石鹸, you should put in しょっきあらいき--0--0--0--せっけん.

Finally, put in the sentences the same way. 食器洗い機がないと困る。--りんごが好き。--ろうそくはどこにありますか。--テレビを観すぎました。--石鹸を使いなさい。

Once you hit enter, your new words should be input into the game. Once you have 100 words, you can then use them to create your own custom city, which you can access from the "Custom City" option on the menu.

Suggestions for Bulk Adding Words

This next part in not necessary, but some of these tips may help you in creating lists and entering them into the game quickly.

First, create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets. (You can also use excel, libreoffice, etc. but this tutorial will explain how to do it in Google Sheets.)

Create a column for each of our four categories (vocab word, meaning, Kanji reading, and example sentence).

This helps make sure that each of our lists will be in the correct order. Next, copy the vocab column that you made. (Hint: Use ctrl+shift+down to select from the top of your column to the bottom of your list).

Next, open up a Google Doc and paste using ctrl+shift+v. (Holding shift makes sure that the cells from Google Sheet aren't copied over.) If you did it correctly, you should get a nice list in your Google Doc like this.

Now we get to use some Google Doc Magic. Use ctrl+h to open up the "Find and Replace menu."

In the "find" section, put \n. Since we checked to match using regular expression, this should highlight the end of each line. Put -- in the "replace with" section.

Hit "replace all." If everything worked, then each of the items in your list should be separated by two dashes. Be sure to delete any dashes at the end.

Now, you can copy your list into Nihongo Quest with ease! Do this for all of your sections to save yourself the hassle of putting in dashes manually!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the Discord! Thanks!