Comment Recently toured Japan with a PDA in tow. (Score 1) 239
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.
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.
