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Japan Pins Tourism Hopes on PDA
Sammy at Palm Addict writes "According to Australia News.com, Japan will start lending PDA's to foreign visitors to help tourists get to grips with the country. The aim is to make Japan more attractive to foreign tourists, who are often put off by the country's language barrier. The PDA's will be loaded with travel information and translation services as part of a tourism promotion scheme. "Japan's tourism authority will lend the PDAs containing Chinese, Korean and English software, to selected tourists who land at Narita Airport near Tokyo from February through March to test the response" Japan's transport ministry said."
I am really keen to goto Japan. THis osunds like a great idea. But whats to stop me leaving with it. A friend of mine lived in Japan and apparently the women there love western men.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Who will trust their travelling to a PDA? Will most people even be able to use it effectively enough to really eliminate any language barriers?
Seems like wishful thinking to me.
They knock you down and take your PDA away in the subway.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Wow, a high-tech solution to a low-tech problem. Tourist areas all over the world manage this without PDAs. By having signs in a second language, using the latin alphabet. And where restaurants have cards in multiple languages.
What a waste of electrons.
I'll be over there to visit my cousin possibly in this time frame. Is there any way I can opt in?
Why does it have to be a PDA? I mean a magazine or pamphlet would seemingly be just as useful to most people (and much cheaper). Put some common translations that tourists might need in a little book, and throw in a good map and some sightseeing information, and you're all set. Now granted, the magazine will not have GPS capability or be able to talk to me or whatever...but still it is only
On another note, PDA's are still pretty touchy most times. They do lock up occasionally, and someone who has never used it could get confused. The batteries die, the screens get scratched up, the stylus gets lost...all of which make it inconvenient to loan out to someone visiting the country.
Japanese text has always looked fine on my Debian GNU/Linux box(es). So does Korean, Chinese, and Russian. My arabic font seems to incomplete though or something. I just had to install the necessary font packages. I don't know what you need on windows. I still can't read any of these languages though...
"Lost in graffiti" ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
having traveled in Japan, I've found the double sided maps adequate for getting around. They are printed with Japanese on one side and another language, say English on the other. It's a simple matter of pattern recognition to get around and after a while one learns to read the Japanese signs at the transport stops. The PDA will make this a little easier, but a paper map is much more robust. A phrase book is also very helpful and incorporation into the PDA will be handy.
Now I just need the airfare, hotel and spending money....
... no reason
;-)
Oh yeah, that was my only barrier anyways.
Actually given enough money the countries I want to visit [in order] would be
- New Zealand, meet some peeps
- Australia, box a roo
- Germany,
- England, meet some peeps
- Japan, get some cheap DVD players
Maybe also add Switzerland there for the good chocolate and hang out at EPFL.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Install japanese language support for your operating system. (Start/Settings/Control Panel/Regional Settings in Windows). Yes, it really is a quite trivial thing to do. I have no idea what you are babbling on about paying for japanese fonts. Do you think all native japanese people pay someone to be able to read and write text on their computers?
Sleep is futile.
Sure, japanese women are often physically pretty and the japanese culture is sophisticated, complex, and ancient.
But the japanese are also quite possibly the most racist people on earth, in my experience. Yes, individual japanese people are often very nice (and painfully polite), but that doesn't mean the general atmosphere you get in japan isn't rather unfriendly, what with all the "no gaijin" signs. A "no japs" sign here would likely get you dragged into court.
http://www.narita-airport.or.jp/e-navi/howto.html
Nice.
Couldn't be done with paper - too much everything.
Don't think it will work well though due to the usual human I/O problem.
If it did speech recognition -> text -> english and back again,
or text translation using a mini handheld scanner with OCR it might be amazing, but for the moment it's probably just a quicker dictionary.
All the japanese students I know have electronic dictionaries. `Flicking through pages?`
A blog I run for the wealth
A guide to katakana (Japanese phonetic characters for foreign words) would be nice.. Or perhaps a little education campaign about it.
Many of the most important signs are written in katakana, which in essence means they are written in English. There are only 46-or-so basic characters to learn, which you can get a decent handle on by the time you step off the plane. This is more than enough to find hotels (hoteru), order food and drinks off most menus, find restaurants (resutoran), etc.
I knew katakana in Japan and only a few Japanese words. I'm not kidding about how handy it was.
Shit, according to thesea href="http://www.narita-airport.or.jp/e-navi/funct ion.html">screenshots, some species of Windows, including of course IE.
Sorry, I'm sorry, really, I don't know what happened, I couldn't help it.
Japan doesn't need to be so expensive if you're prepared to forgo things you might take for granted at home (like apples) ; imagine if a Japanese tourist to your part of the world decided they would only ever eat at Japanese restaurants and stay at the Sheraton.
"There is nothing so simple that works so well that it can't be made to work better by making it more complicated" - ?
What type of PDA will this be? Something we're used to like a Pocket PC or Palm, or do they have their own breed of PDAs in Japan? The latter seems the most likely to me.
:)
They should have included 2 more sentences in the story, and that would have been the entire content of this article. Rather short on details.
Now that Pocket PC has taken over the PDA market and has surpassed Palm in sales will Slashdot change its PDA icon? Of course we already know the answer to that one.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
That's a nice thing. When we went to Japan last year, we gathered lots of information beforehand, and had a few notices with us all the time. Having that in a PDA is certainly useful.
However, getting around Tokyo is fairly easy, and the japanese are extremely friendly and helpful. If you can bridge the language barrier, you're never on your own. Why, at one point all we had to do to have someone ask us if we needed help, walk us to the train and see to it that we got off at the right station, was look dumb at the ticket machine.
In the countryside, though, things are very different, or so we were told. Anything that helps there will be most useful.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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[Credit: Dave Barry, "Dave Barry Does Japan"]
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A collegue of mine told me that he had to pay $5 an apple when visting there. Granted, they probably do not grow many apples in Japan, but here in Montreal we do not pay $5 the Marocan tangerine.
Japan is expensive, and Tokyo very much, but it's not that extreme, or at least I can't verify.
In restaurants, we paid less than twice of what we pay at home. Substract another 10% because you don't tip in Japan. Then you're at roughly London prices.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Shit, according to these screenshots, some species of Windows, including of course IE.
a card saying:
- Please. Mr. Japanese-san How much for the batteries?
In case the pda goes flat...
Are they going to fill the country with Semacodes?
I think tourists will have a hard time just recognising and inputing those Kana characters...
My chances to ever travel to japan would increase 10000% if this PDA was a zaurus running linux with a good proposal for buying it after the trip...
Nicolau Werneck - NIC1138
"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity" -- Thomas Huxley
A PDA with a camera. You take a picture of a sign, it OCRs it and reads you the sign in whatever language you speak.
That'd be cool.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
They ran a similar pilot during the same period last year.
From the looks of the website - the devices haven't really changed much.
http://www.narita-airport.jp/e-navi/
They are, however very fun toys even if nothing has changed. I'm planning to be in Japan again in a few months and if they have any available I'll definitely try them out.
Perhaps most importantly, specific brand or location names are very often shown in katakana. This makes it so you have recognizable landmarks everywhere you go... and can make the difference between seeing jibberish and an arrow, or seeing a sign pointing to "Namco Land" (or whatever) and thinking it would be cool to check out what it is. It's also fun to try to work out what the phonetic words actually come out to in English. It's not always obvious. How was I supposed to know that the fast food chain "Faasto Kitchen" meant "First Kitchen", as opposed to "Fast Kitchen" :)
I would love to go to Japan, but simple calculations put a 20 day trip there beyond my financial limits and there are still alot of cheaper places in the world I want and financially can see. Just to give you a quote of the Lonely Planet.
Japan is probably the most expensive country in the world for travel
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I'll be visiting Japan in February and would Love to be the /.'er that sent a report back on these PDA's, yet I will not be flying into Tokyo. Instead I'll be in Nagoya.
thelikesofwhich.com
Pretty interesting idea infact, foreigners have problems with local language, and a PDA can be packed with travel guidelines, translation programs, audio and video instructions to reach places and all. Infact the translator software can also speak out in local languages saving the poor visitor exercising his vocal skills. With images and video, tourists will get much better idea of what to expect on all the possible tourist spots and can make more informed decisions. Hyperlink nature of digital content and facility to search makes it orders of magnitude more useful for documentation than paper pamplets. And if the cost of PDA is a concern they can allot it based on Passport and collect it when the tourists leave the country. Should save the PDA from becoming extinct I guess.
--
http://www.rootshell.be/~upadhyay/
These PDAs sound like a solution looking for a problem.
Do you really think they came up with this idea without at least putting SOME research into the tourism issue? Don't you think they at least funded one study that might have asked the question, "Why don't you want to travel to Japan?" I'm sure the answer "'Cause I don't speak Japanese" came up from time to time. Why does everyone assume these kinds of decisions are just pulled out of someone's asshole?
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
/ lives in London, Lived in Japan 7 years, Originally from US east coast.
Judging from just the comments so far, I fear this amount of misinformation this thread is going to pickup about Japan. Perhaps the PDA can just have a nice little FAQ for the uninformed who somehow or another managed to wind up in Tokyo. (Because they thought it would be neat.) Or the simple things, like "proper business card manners" for the businessmen.
So far in this thread I've seen all the typical: misleading posts about Japan hating foreigners, misleading posts about Japanese loving foreigners, uninformed posts about the language, complete and utter guesswork abound... etc. Japan seems to be a really popular place for folks with a few thousand bucks and too much time on their hands to head off to these days, head full of myths and a complete unwillingness to deal with anything not of their own culture... then come back and proclaim to all they meet what they "learned".
I figure it's only a matter of time before someone posts the myth that immersion (as an adult) instantly and automagically equals the best way to learn the complex language and writing that even the Japanese spend much of their schooling learning. In short, best of luck... you could actually study the language, culture, and actually try to make a good impression, but I suppose that was never really the point.
Certain imported fruit can get very expensive in Japan. When I visited this year, I was surprised to see a half a honeydew on sale for about $20 USD at a supermarket in Osaka.
AnimeNEXT anime convention
I've been here in Japan for a while now, and I have to say that right now, it's not really ready for filthy gaijin tourists, but it's home-based tourist system is quite evolved, but is hideously expensive because people will pay (or more likely go to Hawaii). It was cheaper and easier for me to take in a weekend in Seoul than in Osaka from Tokyo. Having said that, BBC did a nice story on how horrific London can be too (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3931277.stm).
A TV programme a few months ago highlighted the issue: on-set guests listed their favourite tourist spots: Fuji viewing, Kyoto, Nara, kamakura, whereas the foreign tourists they found all listed other things like: Akihabara, Shibuya, Hiroshima, Nagano for snow sports.
There's definitely a difference between what people may want to see, and what the Japanese Govt. may want to show them. From that then (and the long way around I know), just what info will these PDAs have? 10 reasons why Kyoto's architecture isn't as bad as it looks, or a recent update of Akihabara prices at kakaku.com?
Either way, as someone who's been here 6 years, i really do recommend it, and though it's relative, you can do japan 'cheap', so if you've got the desire to come over, just get that ticket, it really is a lot of fun.
Zenwalk 4 - GNU/Linux Athlon XP2500+
Mac OS X 10.4.x MacBook Core Duo 2GHz
WinXP Athlon64 3700+ DFI/Nvidia6800
1. Visit Japan
2. Steal PDA
3. ????
4. Profit!
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
We can't help it, thousands of hours in meeting rooms have taught us that decision makers do pull decisions out their asshole - it's almost like bobbing for apples for some of them.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
I know what all of that means except for "ofera". Is that a typo?
"Do you speak Japanese? Do you like "ofera"? I want to H (ie, do something hentai)."
AnimeNEXT anime convention
The parent post in indeed very true. Sadly a lot of the English on signs is also rather lacking, and I'm sure a ton more signs would suffer the same problem. There's a reason why sites like engrish.com never run out of material.
Proofreading of English in Japan is probably seen less than on Slashdot forums. As for the spoken language, as a lot of English teachers will tell you, the priority is not on actual English but on what the Japanese education programs consider English. In other words, very foreign sounding words and improper usage.
Here's a very insightful read on English education in Japan by a English Teacher in Japan. http://www.timwerx.net/language/englished.htm
I went to Japan for the first time this year as part of a tour group. I also was afraid of the language barrier, even though I actually know a little Japanese and can read a bit. But it was a lot easier than I could have imagined. Many of the people know enough English to answer basic questions, especially the younger people.
At the hotels, all of the staff know quite a bit of English, as well as the staff at all the tourist spots. Mind you, I was in Osaka, not Japan, which should have been less-English friendly but wasn't. Many of the signs are in English on the Highways and in mass transit, so getting around was a piece of cake.
It was certainly easier to get around than I expected, and although I knew a bit of Japanese, I avoided using it (mostly due to my fear of being embarassed for saying something inadvertantly inappropriate). I'd imagine Tokyo would be even more friendly for tourists, and I'd definitely like to go there one day. In short, everyone should consider going there; the language barrier isn't much of one. I think I had a harder time getting around in Europe than I did in Japan.
AnimeNEXT anime convention
Is it typically given the honorific O-fera? Ah well, if Tea (O-cha) and Sake (O-sake) can get it, I guess anything can.
AnimeNEXT anime convention
after reading this stupid and obviously wrong post i think my i.q. actually dropped
Thought of this when I was hopping from train to train in England.
1. A PDA that mounts on your arm. that will free up a hand
2. built-in GPS unit
3. built-in train schedule
So if you wanted to get from one city to another in England(or any country with a decent rail system), it notes your position, and guides you to the nearest train station.
Then add in other features like eatery info, bed&breakfasts, etc. Surely would have helped me when I was in England.
If it has a speaker saying "where's the toilet" and "how can I get back to the hotel" then that in itself is a nice feature.
I think it's a great idea. Put in a couple of 100 standard sentences. "Can we have some more water", "check please" etc... etc... Stuff it with some maps of the area, maybee a gps locator. It's got to be a helpful tool right?
You Type: Hello how are you doing today, which way to the motel?
You get:
They hear: How whether there is a method to the motel which today has been done today?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Bobbing for apples out of a decision maker's asshole... You are indeed gifted in your imagery.
I've read about this on other websites, this project is so tiny it's practically nonexistent, there are only 50 PDAs to loan. There is considerable speculation that the project is intended primarily to gather GPS data on tourist travels rather than to provide any useful information to tourists.
After being self-isolated for over a thousand years
Less than 250 years, actually. And there was still contact being made, particularly trade with the Portuguese and Chinese.
then before forced to trade at gun point of the US navy
One right.
humiliated into signing the unequal trade treaties
While the treaties were unequal (yet better than the ones that other countries in the region would get), the Japanese government actually liked them at the time. Particularly those parts limiting their interaction with those nasty gaijin.internally usurped by the youth who felt humiliated
Humiliated by the Tokugawa Shogunate, not the Americans. The Satsuma and Choshu had been suffering long before Perry showed up.
forced into WW2 by this youth
Started hostilities, you mean, by invading Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. (I'd throw in their invasion of Korea, but since it happened in 1910, that's even too early for a snide WW1 remark.)
declared the bad guys, nuked, occupied
More correct information.
and run by a puppet government
Come on. The LDP isn't that bad...
I'm Japanese, and let me be the first to inform you: You speak the language like a retarded two-year old.
The US Army uses the Phraselator handheld computer for field soldiers to communicate to Iraqi citizens. It voice-recognizes a stock phrase in the input language (English) and then speaks it in the target language (Arabic). No messy phrasebooks or keypads.
You can get these for other language pairs and activity domains.
Well, the thing about the average Chinese tourist is they can already read most of the signs at a survival level because a huge chunk of the Japanese writing system was stolen from China. (It's sort of like an American going to England. It's close enough to figure out most things, but you'll still trip over others.)
I have travelled to Japan 3 times now. And I have a rudimentary at best understanding of the language. However, this is what makes it so fun to travel there, it is a totally immersive foreign experience. To me, it is much more fun than travelling to Europe, where virtually everyone can speak english (unless they find out you are an American, then you just get treated rudely, becasue we have a dipshit as a president).
The tourists will have to reset every few hours just. If they use a Palm, then they should just rewire the power button to the reset. If tourists have to fumble with paper clips to reset the damn unstable hunks of junk, then the PDAs will just end up cluttering the sidewalks as they're thrown at high speed by frustrated tourists, probably through the windows of the tourism board.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I've been going on about this idea for years - give people a cheap, dumb-terminal wireless PDA the size of a palm pilot when they enter an airport, all it does is pick up a signal from the nearest transmitter and then it can tell you exactly where you are, you can then type in your flight number and it will transmit back directions to your check-in, gate, where to get coffee, how long you have etc etc. you just drop it off as you board the plane, if it breaks its dirt cheap and if you try and nick it the transmitter will know. The same system could be used in millions of other places for endless things...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
You forgot to tell us what happens in Soviet Russia.
No matter where I went in Tokyo, I knew that if I could find a subway station I could find my way back to Nishi-Magome station, which was walking distance from where I was staying.
Check out Metro. There's also a Pocket PC Version.
After free iPod's, its free PDA's now. Welcome to the age of Free and Open Source Hardware (FOSD).
Roughly london prices, but 10x london quality.
Very likely, yes. Any nation that is eating fish and meat raw has no other choice but to make fresh and high quality foods a preference.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...and thought "Public display of affection"? I thought they were saying Japan was going to film porno on the streets or something!
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
The company I work for in Japan has been moving slowly forward on this idea for a long time now - a PDA for tourists that provides specific and useful location-based information and services. Of course, it's a lot easier when you don't have to turn a profit, grumble grumble.
Anyway, it seems like a really good idea that's hobbled in a few dreadful ways:
1) the PDA can act as a phone, but only for outgoing domestic calls, and it seems as if it's time-limited (2 hours??). I'm guessing that it might be free phone service, so they're trying to cut down on possible over-use, but not allowing incoming calls is a huge problem.
2) no GPS. If it's going to provide useful information, it's got to know where it is at any time, because chances are good that the user won't... So GPS is essential, and enables a huge range of other applications, not least of which is live directions.
Other than these two problems, it seems great, and even has a nicely put-together software package. Speech recognition would be the next step, or at least a simple kanji translation program (so that, for example, if you were trying to understand a waiter, you could pass him the PDA and have him write on the screen, then the PDA would translate that to English - both of these functions that are already present in the Zaurus models sold in Japan.
GenkiJACS - Genki Japanese and Culture School
Then add another ~$1000(last I checked) for the flightticket.
I just scored a round-trip fare from Atlanta to Nagoya for $780 USD (TAX INCLUDED) using a Japanese travel agency.
It used to be expensive, but if you look in the right places, your free PDA could be on the horizon.
thelikesofwhich.com
I've been to Japan twice now, with only the Japanese language skills I learned from a Berlitz book/CD, Shogun and a great book called Japanese Street Slang. I didn't use anything from the last book, but the other two were enough for me to get around without relying heavily on using English.
Even in the northern provinces, where far fewer people speak English, my broken Japanese and lots of hand gestures made it possible to get by. I've been a lot of places, and a difficult language barrier is far easier to deal with than unsafe or unsanitary conditions. Remember, this is a culture where it's considered rude to count your change, because doing things honorably is a way of life there.
Another myth about Japan is that it's expensive to travel in. If you want a vacation that feels like you're in America, it is. Big hotel rooms are expensive. So is imported fresh fruit. Want a cantaloupe? $30.00 please. But if you're willing to go somewhat local--get a small hotel room with a futon on tatame instead of a king sized four poster, eat local foods--it's not much more than staying in any place in the states. It's not South America, but you can indeed get a nice hotel room in Tokyo for $40.00 a night.
Anyway, my point is, you don't need a PDA or any high tech stuff to get around Japan. You need an openness to a different culture. You need to be willing to try. You need to be willing to do things in an unfamiliar way. And you need to do a little research before going to make sure that you don't miss some of the subtle, wonderful differences.
Lastly, as an American, I recommend that every American with a conscience visit Nagasaki, visit Epicenter Park and the Atom Bomb Museum. It's a beautiful city, and a humbling experience. It's not easy to get to, but well worth the trip. So go out, pick up your copy of Lonely Planet and go!
Oh, and one more thing. If you're going to go, make sure to buy a JR pass. You can get full access to one of Japan's main rail systems for 1, 2 or 4 weeks. If you want to take one trip out of Tokyo, the pass pays for itself. Hope all this info helps!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Otherwise, first message on turning on the PDA:
"How are you gentlemen."
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Some one will end up shouting 'My hovercraft is full of eels' at some poor shop keeper.
They have an online discussion board where you can ask for and get information and even meet other travellers/expats while you're over there. It's a good source for very recent information, unlike the books which can at times be poorly updated.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I was travelling throughout Japan for three weeks in October, and found my PDA was indispensable.
I'm learning Japanese anyway, but I only know 100 or so kanji (and a pretty limited vocabulary too, so not many compounds). The freeware Pocket PC kanji input method and dictionary by Mike Johnson were invaluable. Yes, as said before, a few of the signs have translations and romanji, and most of the Japanese seem to be able to understand a little English (but are quite reserved around foreigners), however being able to look up words here and there really made a difference.
Unfortunately the single biggest problem for westerners has to be the Japanese addressing system. One or two of the major streets have names, the others just plain don't. Blocks are numbered in an ad-hoc way within each area, and buildings are numbered again in seemingly random and totally incomprehensible ways. A large number of frustrating hours were spent wandering around going "this must be 1-3-11 here, no hold on, aaaarrrh!". Mind you, you got to interact with plenty of locals when asking directions, all of whom were very helpful, and quite a few were lost themselves.
So, I can certainly appreciate a PDA as a language tool, but they killer app would be if the Japanese tourist authority links it in with a GPS receiver and clear tourist-oriented mapping so one don't end up wandering around bizarre areas for hours on end (although the container processing area of Fukuoka's port is, er, an interesting side of Japan I wouldn't have otherwise seen had I taken the correct exit from the station). Link the GPS coordinates to a database of useful snippets of information (perhaps user-extendable), so that you could for example see what restaurants were recommended within 2 minutes walk, or be told that the restaurant you were visiting was good for a certain local speciality, etc.
Of course, things went slightly more Microsoft-standard when my Pocket PC crashed and hard-reset wiping everything, but thankfully that was towards the end of the last week. Hey Ho.
Japan's tourism authority will lend the PDAs containing Chinese, Korean and English software, to selected tourists who land at Narita Airport near Tokyo from February through March to test the response, the transport ministry said.
Woo hoo! That's exactly when I'll be going to Japan and through Narita airport. Hope I get one of these to play with. If I do, I'll submit a review.
World's tallest building rises in the desert
I visited Tokyo in 1994 and here's what I remember.
So I did well with my Lonely Planet guide and I did want to visit the tourist attractions, which had enough English translations for me to get by. And I can read maps and navigate very well.
Would a PDA have helped me on this trip? Perhaps not, but if I had one I would be able to talk more to the locals. Depending on the situation that you're in, that could make all the difference.
Writing stories for computers and humans since 1979
True, you can spend a lot of money there, if you eat at exclusive restaurants, stay in five star hotels, do all your shopping in the Ginza district, and take taxis everywhere. But you can get around everywhere very easily by train and the Japan Rail Pass is well worth it. Hotels are small by western standards, but I wasn't in Japan to sit in hotel rooms. And you can eat very well on a reasonable budget -- no need to eat at expensive restaurants. I ate very well in Japan on a reasonable budget. I tried all different kinds of Japanese food, including some things considered delicacies, and stayed under budget. Fugu for 1300 yen! Basashi! Matsutake mushroom! Kujira! Unagi! And much more.... If you're not adventurous with food and just stick to the noodle and curry shops and such, you can eat much cheaper too. In California I wouldn't know where to go to eat breakfast for under 5 bucks, and anything I found would be crap food - an egg mcmuffin or such. In Japan I could find a freshly prepared and healthy breakfast, lunch, or dinner for 3 bucks or less and leave the restaurant feeling full. Of course, food is amazing in Japan so you'll want to spend more than that, but the idea that the food there is all prohibitively expensive is bullshit.
Hm... actually strange as it might sound Kanji is one of the main reasons I like the language. It can be a pain in the ass at times, but a pack of Kanji cards helps the process a lot and gives you an absorbing and interesting activity whenever you have five minutes spare during the day, which is really often. I carry about 20 with me in my coat pocket at any given time and drill a few while on the bus to and from campus, between lectures, while waiting for a compile job or for food to cook... I'm rarely bored for more than a few minutes as a result.
If you think about it, we've all had to do something like learning Kanji anyway for English: learning the incredibly convoluted spelling system. Yes there are rules and you can often intuit your way through regular words, but there's so many special cases that the way a word is written down must seem completely arbitrary at times. I'm sure learning our spelling is about as dreaded for the Japanese as learning their Kanji is for us. That and you can often guess at the meaning of a Kanji by looking at its radicals (the most important subsymbols)... or so I'm told. I haven't progressed that far yet. Yeah it requires a significant investment of time and effort to learn, but I'd find the language much more boring if they just used Hiragana for everything.
Even if the fact that there's two ways of saying each number still drives me up the wall...
It is misleading to tell people to just learn Katakana. There aren't really that many foreign (loan) words unless all you're doing in Japan is buying beer (biiru) or a computer (pasokon).
If you actually want to eat, learn both Kana (Hiragana and Katakana).
There are hundreds of sites on the Internet for learning the basics of Japanese. Check the Japan Reference forum first - http://www.jref.com/forum/
Second, chances are that he shopped at premium fruit shops in premium locations (e.g. near the Imperial Palace, or in a high-class department store). Then he can easily spend more than $5 per apple, but that apple is likely to be:
- Of super-high quality, both in appearance and taste; and
- Primarily meant to be for gifts (i.e., not as tourist snacks).
Meanwhile, those of us in the middle class buy our apples at residential-area supermarkets (or maybe convenience stores) for maybe $1-$2 apiece (might be a bit high this year due to typhoon damages).Really, folks, grow a brain! Japan doesn't have five times the per-capita GDP of, say, Canada; there is no way we can afford $5 apples on a regular basis. I know this is slashdot, but please stop accepting anecdotal evidence as a general trend.
Don't Panic! In large friendly letters?
I lost my copy of the green golf ball joke can anyone find it for me?
The idea is not bad. But, giving out to "selected" tourists is problematic. First, it will upset some of the tourist... For example, backpackers are not all potential thieves. Neither do people with specific skin color/ race. But, we are fairly sure these are the factors when determining whether to lend the PDA to that particular traveller. Second, you will never know whehter the info containing inside is sufficient. If not so, you may consider, say buy an electronic map in advance. Third, when do you do the plaining of the trip.
So, why don't they just give out free software for download on the web. It can probably solve all the above problems.
Concerning hiragana... To delve into learning a writing system where nearly the entire written vocabulary is foreign isn't an attractive option for most travellers. If you don't know the language, you'll usually read it and think to yourself "Great.. I've learned nothing", and probably learn not to bother reading it most of the time because it's usually a disappointment. To make matters worse, it's more frequently interspersed with unintelligible kanji. It's kind of a no-brainer to say "Trouble getting around Japan? Learn Japanese!". Much different than handing out a PDA. It is perhaps of interest to people that Japanese does in fact have a set of phonetic characters for their own words though, since many people aren't aware of it.
:)
So... I still like katakana as a hack to prevent you from feeling completely lost. Within a couple hours, you pick up the system and can suddenly read (AND understand) 80+% of the words written with it. It's also a unique surprise in the Japanese language which I felt was worth pointing out to people
And I supposed they were forced to rape all those (non-Western) "comfort women" and use live Chinese (i.e., non-Western) civilians for bayonet practice. (And it was the West's fault, too!)
declared the bad guys, nuked, occupied
Oh, my, how awful. BTW, the Germans were "forced" into WW2, called the bad guys, occupied and divided in two for forty years and they don't seem to be very racist now, besides the marginalized skinheads.
(Disclaimer: my wife is Chinese, so yes, I'm biased. Revisionist apologists piss me off.)
I was in tokyo a few years ago, and here are a few tips.
For anybody wishing to use a credit card to get cash from an ATM, there are very very few ATMs that take or process non-japanese cards.
But after some expensive time on the net while staying in the Tokyo station Hotel on night 1 of the trip, I found a handy ATM, that is in English and takes foreign cards.
On the Yaesu side of Tokyo station, there is an underground shopping mall. In there, there is, hidden away in a side passage, that elusive ATM. Basically, come out of Tokyo Station on the Yaesu side (not Marunouchi / Imperial Palace side) and immediately turn right. Walk past the bus stops and you will see steps leading down to the mall. Go down the steps and into the mall. Head towards the shops and there will be turnings off on the left hand side. Down the end of one of those turnings is the ATM. Of course it may have moved by now, but it had moved from the location that I found for it on the net when I was there, but persistence pays off (especially when you have no cash, and you're hungry ! )
Second tip : If you want a JR railpass, then you MUST buy it before you go to Japan. They are not available inside the country. Once you arrive in Japan (narita in my case) you have to go to JR's office in the airport to get the pass issued, so take all the relevant documents.
I would post a map of Tokyo, but all that stuff is still packed away somewhere. Check out Ueno Park, and I did some video at the time which you can see here (sorry, its realmedia, but it was all processed on my laptop, and uploaded when possible while travelling).