There's also the quick way to learn this stuff.

You can always just get the Japanese version of a game you enjoyed in English, which makes it much easier to figure out which commands and menu entries are which. This is how we did it- puzzling through Katakana came later.

 Kain's up, so the commands are Attack, Jump, Item.

(This means you also have the opportunity to learn how to call someone a Spoony Bard in Japanese. That really should be in every phrasebook.)