HOW TO NAME YOUR CHARACTER IN TOKIMEKI MEMORIAL

* Japanese has three types of characters you should know about: kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Kanji are usually super complex symbols that each mean a whole word. Meanwhile, hiragana is kind of like the Japanese alphabet, which all kanji can be broken down into. Instead of individual letters, each hiragana character is a syllable such as "ka", "shi", "mo", etc. Katakana functions the exact same way as hiragana, but is instead most often used for foreign words and names. It may also be used for normal Japanese words for emphasis or as a personality quirk, but you won't find that too often in Tokimeki Memorial.

* One of your first biggest hurdles when booting up any Tokimeki Memorial game will be naming your character. While all games have the option to input your name in alphanumeric characters, you'll often find yourself limited to only three characters. Not to mention, EVS requires you to put your name in hiragana. On this page will be various tips about how the pronounciation works and a translation of the kana keyboards found in each game. Note that the hiragana and katakana keyboards will have the same layout, so while I will only be translating the hiragana keyboards on this page, know that the same syllable will be in the same placement on the katakana keyboard.

* Here are a few tips for getting the prounciation of your name to sound correct:

• The vowels (aiueo) are pronounced similar to "ah", "ee", "oo", "eh", "oh" respectively; All constanants sound the same as they do in English
• Equivalent sounds: R = L; B = V
• Using the lowercase "tsu" doubles the constanant it comes before (ex. put it before "Ta" to turn it into "TTA")
• Using the lowercase "ya/yu/yo" after a character with an -i changes the sound (ex. Shi+ya/yu/yo becomes Sha/Shu/Sho; Ki+yo becomes Kyo)
• And just to clarify: using the lowercase aiueo/tsu/yayuyo is NOT the same as using the uppercase ones!
• The solo "n" is meant to be used when there's a constanant afterwards, or if it's the end of the name (ex. Shion, Genji)
• Try using the em dash (—) for names that end with R or another hard constanant
• You can use the lowercase vowels to adjust the sound of the previous vowel - this might help you make sounds of long vowels (e.g., De+i would give you the long e sound instead of being pronounced like "deh"; Fu+a would sound more like "Fa")