Tamagotchi School / TamaSuku Introduction and Start-Up

Today I finally got around to dedicating time to my new Tamagotchi - the Tamagotchi School or TamaSuku as it is in Japan. Since I don't read Japanese you'll have to bear with me as I build this section of my site with information. Brendan, my husband, can read some Japanese and between him and me poking through website translators and dictionaries we are trying to make the best sense we can of this new Tamagotchi.

At 3:53pm on December 13th, 2006 I started up my neon green Tamagotchi School. As per all Tamagotchi, I pressed the reset button once on the back to make sure all would go well. A little tune played and several characters danced across the screen. There were balloons and a lot of Japanese. At a glance the only thing I could figure out was (and this is a guess) the four balloons that the Tamagotchi characters were holding had four Japanese letters on them. It is my belief that these characters are "TMGC" - as these four letters are all over the manual and on the Tamagotchi and the Tamagotchi chain tag. That is just a guess. They flashed by too fast for me to be able to tell which Japanese characters they were, as I'm not that familiar yet.

After the tune played it stopped on the usual Date and Time screen. I entered the date and time as usual and than it went to the Name screen. Well I hadn't thought very ahead on this and realized that the alphabet for typing in my name was actually in Japanese. Hiragana to be specific. So I went to the internet and found me four valuable pages; a page that I could type in my name and get the translation in hiragana, the Japanese alphabet (and its romanized version next to it), a romanized to hiragana translator and a hiragana to english translator. These pages, especially the last three, are going to be my best friends during the next few weeks as I figure out this little Tama. Between all of those pages (I linked them in the site credits page) and my husbands ability to read some Japanese, I figure we can really get this translated to a reasonable level of accuracy.

Katherine in Japanese

With the help of those webpages I was able to type the five letters in Hiragana that equaled the name Katherine. Feeling relieved at beating that challenge, I proceeded to put in my birth date next. Thankfully Tama-Instinct just takes over on some of these screens, as they of course have no hint of any English words.

Language, Math, Science

The next screen that showed up was a little different. At the top it had two lines of Japanese and down below I could scroll through three images. Between the manual, the internet and Brendan arriving just in time to help me figure it out, we determined that this page was asking for a School Subject. The icons below represented three subjects: Japanese Language Studies (like English Class), Math and Science.

Note: On the left side keypad, use the Right Arrow to scroll through the characters and use the Enter button ("B") to select an item.

I choose Math from the list. I believe this means that I am a Math Teacher in my Tamagotchi classroom.

The next screen showed six Tamagotchi characters I could scroll through. Brendan determined that this page said for us to decide/choose a member/student to start with. I choose the little guy who looked like Mimitchi - Shippokotchi. The other choices were: Haneotchi, Kuchibotchi, Memepetchi, Mamepotchi and Tsunokotchi.

When I selected my character... something happened here. The character talked to me in Japanese. Brendan translated it and the Tamagotchi says "Nice to meet you!" He did his happy dance and than he started pacing across the floor in front of my blackboard.

At this point the TamaSuku was started and I could select the Icons.

The Tamagotchi School Buttons:
Unlike most Tamagotchi released by Bandai, the TamaSuku has six buttons instead of the usual three. While at first I was unsure if this system would be better, I'd say that after playing with TamaSuku I can see why they had to double the buttons. I think that they are a bit uncomfortable to be on the left side of the screen instead of at the bottom, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

On the left side keypad (button section labeled "A" in the manual), use the Up and Down Arrows (north & south) to scroll through characters on the menus. Use the Left Arrow (west) to go back and the Right Arrow (east) to go to the next item. The buttons on the right side of the TamaSuku are used as such: the bottom button is Enter (labeled "B" in the manual) and the top button is Cancel (labeled "C" in the manual).