Travel Tips in Japan Episode1: Useful apps

It is getting sakura season and the best season to travel to Japan, but this year, because of unusual cold weather, I guess sakura starts blooming a bit late… Keep on eyes sakura forecast.

I’g going to introduce two apps that will be useful when traveling Japan

MapsMe

You will find Japan has not many free Wi-Fi connection service, and be frustrated to use app you downloaded before going to Japan.

This app can be used in offline environment and navigate you to the destination!!

Kanji stragglers!!

Yomiwa is for you!

This app’s highlight is that you can scan Kanji with camera, and this app tells you how to read and the meaning. Many translation app has hand-write input facility like Google translation.

It supposed to scan printed Kanji on signs, flyers, and notes, but I tried to scan my hand writing.

It understands what I wrote!!

I also tried hand-write input… well… Google translation recognises what I wrote better even I write a bit messy.

Yomiwa recognises only when I write neatly and it needs consistency of the word’s structure. But you might not to ask write down in Kanji to explain something for you… Ask people to write in Hiragana or Roman letters… or even English. Hahaha.

This is very interesting.

Because each Kanji has meaning(s), and itself and the combination tell you what they mean.

So if you check the meaning of each letter, you will understand what the Japanese say.

Many of my students tell me Kanji is difficult. Yes, that is because they are not familiar with the structures and that fact a word has a meaning. But once you are familiar with Kanji, it is more easy to understand Japanese in writing and reading, of course for traveling too!

At our General Japanese course, we do not push students in Beginner as we do not want our students to dislike Japanese because of Kanji.

Yesterday, I was really delighted that Sae sensei told me that some students in Beginner3 requested her to learn Kanji in class. They said that they are interested in Kanji but do not know how to study. Woo… Good luck Beginner students(ﾟ∀ﾟ)!!

General Japanese Beginner1 starts on March

Application is now open. Do not miss out the chance to start learning Japanese!!!