The Nintendo Switch is region free, and many (not all) games, including Octopath Traveler, have the full Japanese text and audio available in the U.S. release of the game. No need to import from Japan! This is an amazing resource for gamers who are learning Japanese. Here’s my latest grab!

Kanji: 取捨選択

Hiragana: しゅしゃせんたく

Romaji: Shusha Sentaku

English: Choices. Decision to accept or reject.

Rough literal translation: Life is a continuous string of decisions on what to accept and what to reject. I suspect the actual in game translation is something like, “Life is nothing but a series of choices…”

The phrase that I didn’t know until encountering it in this game is 取捨選択 shusha sentaku. This is one of those phrases where if you know the individual characters, you can pretty much guess the meaning of the phrase.

The first character 取 means “to take,” and the second character 捨 means to “throw away” and is common in the verb 捨てる. The next two characters make up a common vocabulary of 選択 which means to chose, make a selection, or choice.

All together 取捨選択 means to make a decision as to whether to accept or reject something.

I tweeted this as well! Check my Twitter account @Japannewbie for more occasional Japanese language tidbits from games.