Are you an iPhone owner? And a learner of Japanese? Then this one’s for you. Harvey over at JapanNewbie has created some new iPhone Apps that he believes will be useful to help Japanese learners study Japanese numbers and particles.

Introducing two recently updated iPhone Apps to help you in your Japanese studies, Japanese 101: Numbers and Japanese 101: Particles.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re at a store in Japan having just made a big purchase. You managed to talk to the staff all in Japanese and are feeling pretty proud of yourself. The cashier rings it up and says, “yon man sanzen gojyuu ichi en ni narimasu!” in that rapid speech that only comes with years of repeating prices from behind the register. You sheepishly peek around to get a look at the display, because embarrassingly, you couldn’t quite catch the number that she said. Listening comprehension fail!

We’ve all been in this situation at one time or another. Numbers are tough in foreign languages. Big numbers are tougher. And in Japan, big numbers come up all the time!

Since 1,000 yen is the equivalent of just about 10 U.S. dollars, any big purchase or discussion about prices will quickly have you dealing with numbers beyond 100,000. The fact that number groupings in Japanese are different from English makes things extra tricky as well. For all of these reasons, accurate listening comprehension of large numbers often comes relatively late for Japanese learners.

Japanese 101: Numbers is built to train your listening comprehension muscles by challenging you to listen to and identify a large number spoken by a native Japanese speaker. There are two test modes available. In one mode you simply have to identify the number in a multiple choice quiz format. In the more difficult fill-in-the-blank quiz mode you have to actually type in the number that was said.

You can also browse the study cards to study a large range of numbers, currently spanning 1 to beyond 16,000. Future updates will continue to expand the range, including numbers beyond 1,000,000. Every audio file is recorded by a native speaker. You won’t find any robot-generated speech here. Check out Japanese 101: Numbers if you want to pump up your listening comprehension skills for big numbers.

The Japanese 101: Particles App is similar in structure to the Numbers App.

However, this time instead of identifying numbers you are challenged to listen to a sentence read in Japanese without the particle, and then identify the particle that should have been in the gap. The app has a fill-in-the-blank study mode where you must type in the missing particle using hiragana, and a more simple multiple choice mode.

This is sort of like hearing…. “I went __ the store and ate __ apple.” Without the “to” and “an” the sentence is understandable, but obviously incorrect and wrong. Messing up Particles in Japanese will have you sounding like that to Japanese people. Particles often give students of Japanese trouble at first, but frequent practice and lots of listening will eventually make the particles second nature.

The questions in the Particles App are modeled after those that appear in the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) levels N5 and N4 (previously JLPT 4 and 3). Appropriate kanji are used in the questions, and in the Study Mode you can touch to flip the card over and see the romaji, so even beginners shouldn’t shy away from this app.

Like in Numbers, the focus of Japanese 101: Particles is on listening comprehension, so you’ll hear a native speaker read each of the 160+ sentences included in the application. With enough use you’ll eventually be able to naturally “feel” what particle is missing from each sentence.

These are both solid applications that drill very specific aspects of Japanese. The thing that sets these apps apart from all of the other apps out there is the huge amount of native audio. If you like the other apps in the Japanese 101 series, you’re sure to enjoy these as well!

Enjoy!

— Harvey

Related Links:

Particles App reviewed by Yonasu.com.

There are a surprisingly large number of applications for studying Japanese to be found in the App Store, and you can find applications suitable for all occasions and ability levels, from on-the-go cramming on the train or bus to several-hour study sessions at your local café. It would be a daunting task to cover all the Japanese study applications found in the App Store, but having tried a good number of them, I’ve compiled a list of my favorites. The following apps were all downloaded from the U.S. iTunes Store and paid for in U.S. dollars.

Japanese – $17.99, by codefromtokyo

If you buy only one application for Japanese study, buy this. The Japanese app virtually eliminates the need to carry around your electronic dictionary. At $17.99, it is the most expensive app on the list, but it is by far the best. Frequently updated, this Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary provides an extensive list of features. Included are plenty of example sentences, full conjugation charts, and a jump function activated by simply touching any word in an example sentence. These are just a few of the useful features available when looking up words. Japanese also allows you to make several of your own vocabulary lists, complete with notes and color-coded labels and allows you to study these words via a spaced repetition flash card program. In addition to the standard word look-up system, Japanese allows users to look up words based on classification topics such as sports, economics, or literature, as well as lexical categories such as nouns, verbs, onomatopoeia, and counters. I cannot recommend this application highly enough.

Cheaper alternative: Kotoba! – free, by Pierre-Phi di Costanzo

While not as feature-rich as Japanese, Kotoba! is more than competent as an offline Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary. Considering that it’s free, this application is perfect for those who are not in need of the bells and whistles found in the Japanese application.

iKanji Touch – $9.99, by ThinkMac Software

Another heavy-hitting study application, iKanji Touch is a fantastic flash card based kanji study application overflowing with useful features. All of the kanji are broken down into either JLPT or grade school levels, and are then further broken down into sets of 20. Browsing the kanji flash cards, which include readings, meaning, and radicals for over 2,000 kanji, is as simple as swiping your finger, while tapping the flash card will flip it over and show you the proper stroke order. Tapping the bottom of each card will bring up a list of vocabulary words and compounds that incorporate that particular kanji. An extensive testing system is also in place to help users actually learn new kanji rather than simply review them. The test system covers kanji meanings, readings, compounds, and stroke order. This is as close to having a comprehensive kanji workbook on your iPhone or iPod Touch as you’re going to get. Also try: ShinKanji – $5.99, by Benoit Cerrina.

KanjiBox – $2.99, by Unknown Genius Software

Recently updated to add the quiz modes found on the popular Facebook version, KanjiBox is perfect for kanji and vocabulary review in short bursts. You can choose from five levels of difficulty ranging from JLPT levels 1 through 4, as well as a more difficult “sensei” mode. For those not familiar with the Facebook version, the functionality is simple; it is a multiple choice quiz game where you will be presented with either a kanji or a vocabulary word and you must tap the correct answer. That’s it. KanjiBox is extremely simple yet highly addicting. The application will remember which words you consistently answer correctly and which words you tend to miss. Missed words will appear more frequently until they are learned. Also try: Kanji Flip & Japanese Flip – $5.99 each, by Proffitt Ink.

KanjiPop – $1.99, by Lima Sky

Another time-waster, KanjiPop is a time-based game where you are given the on-yomi, kun-yomi, and English meaning (which can be turned off) of a kanji, and you must tap the corresponding kanji character from a box of 16 possible answers before time runs out. This application is not ideal for learning kanji, but it is a fun way to review them. There are 127 levels of increasing difficulty, and you must complete a level in order to advance to the next. There is one drawback to this application in that you cannot choose which level you would like to play from the title screen. In order to play previously completed levels you must first “fail” a level and then select which level you would like to attempt from the “game over” screen. When you restart the application, you will be brought back to the highest previously completed level.

By Greenose Zazaki
Guest Contributor

I am a Hong Kong Chinese who loves to travel to Japan a lot. Even though my wife is a native Japanese, and I have learnt Japanese for years, when I’m traveling alone there are times when I find it difficult to communicate with the local Japanese people.

It is well known that Japanese mostly don’t speak English. In fact, many feel nervous when you try to talk to them in English. With my still rudimentary Japanese (four years of study has only taken me so far), I thought that I could get by speaking Japanese about tourist-related topics. But the difficulty started when they heard me speaking in Japanese, and they assumed that I would be able to understand conversational Japanese well enough. What usually followed was a stream of Japanese responses, likely in the polite form, which is difficult and mostly an unknown territory to me.

Now that I have an iPhone, however, besides using it as a “phone” for roaming in Japan, I actually have a pocket-size computer that I can download tons of apps for. There are several useful apps that I have downloaded and used that I would like to introduce here, as well as another app that I wrote myself after observing the shortcomings of these apps.

Kotoba!

(Free App)

The straight forward choice is to download a Japanese Dictionary app to my iPhone. There are plenty and many are free. I have been using “Kotoba!”  for a while now. It’s free, and it’s based on the JMDict Project. The download is hefty (123 MB), so you may want to connect to WiFi when downloading. Besides English to Japanese, and Japanese to English, it also supports French, German and Russian (activated by going into the Settings). Search is fast and it comes with examples. The nice touch is that all result text can be copied to the clipboard for further usage, such as Google searches or emailing. The biggest drawback is that it doesn’t have any voice features.

Talking Japanese Phrasebook

(US $0.99)

But a Japanese dictionary won’t offer enough help if you want to express yourself during your travels. A phrasebook app will come in handy, especially when you’re doing a specific activity and you’re hunting for a specific sentence to say (like asking for directions). Talking Japanese Phrasebook is an inexpensive choice with an easy-to-use interface. Dialogues are divided into categories like accommodation, food and drink, shopping etc., and are narrated by a pre-recorded voice in Japanese. The main shortcoming of this app is that dialogues are a bit limited and Westerner biased (for example, there are only three entries for Japanese Food Dialogues, for sushi, Kobe beef and sake).

Yubisashi Japan – The Original Point-and-Speak (English Edition)

(U.S. $2.99)

The Yubisashi series offers well-known travel handbooks in Japan that show dialogues in bubbles with cute illustrations, which is pretty handy for the purposes of pointing and speaking. The design is clean and it’s usually easy to hunt for the sentence or words to say. This iPhone app is a faithful migration of the book contents, with one strong function: now the dialogues are spoken for you by a synthesized Japanese voice.

The trade-off for faithful migration is that a full page doesn’t fit quite well on the small iPhone screen. Zooming and scrolling is a bit cumbersome, especially when you are in the street with people waiting to see what you want to say.

“Decent” Japanese Travelling Communicator

(Limited time sale: US$4.99 -> US$3.99)

There are several drawbacks on the Japanese phrase book apps: Dialogues are not customizable (e.g. you can’t ask for the directions to a place directly), the dialogue selections are Westerner oriented and inappropriate to use sometimes (e.g. you shouldn’t ask for a cheaper price in a shop or ask for the bill in most restaurants). But the biggest problem is that you can’t easily understand the response from the locals even though you manage to say what you want to say!

With the objective to solve these limitations in mind, I have written my own iPhone app called “Decent” Japanese Travelling Communicator. Conversations in the app are categorized into places like train, traditional Japanese

hotel, ramen shop, etc. Within each place, the possible dialogues and the corresponding responses are listed with recorded voice narration (done by my Japanese wife). Some dialogues contain blanks for customization purpose, where the user can sketch the words (e.g. name of place, product, etc.) on the interactive notepad. The interactive notepad can also serve as a place for sketching their answers, too. Culture-related reminders that foreigners may worth noting are included for each situation. The app is also fully illustrated by me (I am also a moonlighting children book illustrator!).

I hope that you will enjoy traveling around Japan more easily with these handy apps!

Greenose Zazaki is a childrens book illustrator/author, a university lecturer of multimedia and interactive design, and a husband in a Chinese and Japanese multicultural family. Formerly a software developer in the Bay Area, United States, he now resides in Hong Kong but travels to Japan frequently. He is the author of the iPhone app: “Decent” Japanese Travelling Communicator. His Chinese illustrated blog can be found at http://hk.myblog.yahoo.com/fu-fu.

Harvey is the Webmaster of the 5+-year-old JapanNewbie.com. He lived in Japan from 2001 to 2007 and passed JLPT level 1 in 2003. He is now a Japanese to English translator and maintains JapanNewbie.com to share tidbits on Japanese language and culture.

By Harvey
Guest Contributor

The JLPT exam is just around the corner, and if you need one last learning tool to really solidify your understanding of Japanese particles for the JLPT level 4, a new iPhone App I created called “Japanese 101: Particles” just might do the trick. (A future update will include JLPT level 3 content.)

“Japanese 101: Particles” was just released on Nov. 25, so it’s really hot off the press. The application trains users in the correct use of Japanese particles. It takes an audio-visual approach and uses native-speaker audio and large fonts to really drive home the examples sentences.

I’m a real believer in developing a “gut” feeling for Japanese, and especially for the particles. It’s important to first read the “rules” for particle usage, but unless you’re some sort of idiot savant with a flawless memory and super grammar processing mind, the rules alone are probably not going to do it. Native Japanese speakers usually cannot explain the usage of the particles because they’re just used to it – just like native English speakers usually cannot explain article usage. Advanced Japanese speakers immersed in the language will also eventually reach a point when they can hardly explain them either, but they know what just “sounds right.” To develop this gut feeling for the particles you’ll need to hear, read, and speak, plenty of example sentences. It also helps to hear a sentence without the particle inserted so that you can use your intuition to figure out which particle should be there. This app lets you do all that.

Indeed, after studying with this application enough you should be able to say which particle should fill in the blank before the app is even finished reading the sentence. Not necessarily because you have memorized the answer, but because your intuition is starting to kick in. Currently the app has 50+ sentences, but 50 more are in the works for the JLPT 3 level and they will be added to the app for free as an update before the end of the year.

In the “Study Mode” you can see and hear each sentence with the particle omitted. You can then flip the card over to see the correct answer, the romaji, and a translation. If you’re the type who enjoys the nitty gritty grammar explanations you can check the “Notes” section to see that as well. The grammar notes were put together by a professional Japanese teacher, so they’re accurate and to the point.

The “Quiz” mode will have you listening to the audio of the spoken Japanese, and have you attempt to touch the correct particle that should fill the gap. After the quiz, you can see what you missed and study those cards again. This quiz format will improve your listening comprehension as well as develop that important gut feeling for the particles.

That’s all we’ve got time for here – but enjoy. Particles are one of the most frustrating aspects about learning Japanese at first, but they can be conquered! A Japanese teacher told me once, “Mastering Japanese is mastering the particles.” I think that’s about right. Hope this application is of some help!

LINKS

You might also be interested in the other Japanese 101-series applications. See a big list of them here:
http://www.japannewbie.com/iphone-apps/

Application Information Page on JapanNewbie.com:
http://www.japannewbie.com/hiragana/particles/

Direct link to iTunes Store for App Purchase and Download:
http://bit.ly/4vfInD

Related Articles:

http://www.wideislandview.com/?p=1892%20JLPT%20Preparation

Particles in your Pocket - Japanese 101: Particles for iPhone and iPod Touch

By Joshua Zimmerman

Nothing is worse than a very long commute time to work, unless it’s a commute with nothing to do. Luckily if you have an iPod Touch or iPhone there are a number of ways to pass the day. Below are a few games to kill time on your daily commute.

Tower Defense Games

Fieldrunners $2.99

A very popular “tower defense” game with great graphics, open gameplay, plenty of replay value, and a low price. If you like your tower defense games, you’ll like this.

geoDefense $2.99 & geoDefense Swarm $0.99

The former is a “tower defense” game on rails featuring retro graphics and stunning particle effects. The latter is the sequel that expands on the original idea, only with complete open gameplay for add difficulty. (Free lite version available.)

Arcade Shooters

Blue Attack! $1.99

Protect your base against ever-increasing swarms of enemies. Featuring rich graphics, two modes of play, customizable ships, and plenty of action, it’s a game that will keep you entertained for some time.

Isotope $1.99

A beautiful top-down shooter in the style of Geometry Wars. With dozens of ship upgrades available and over 100 missions, Isotope will provide you with many hours of gameplay. (Free lite version available.)

Dropship $0.00 a.k.a. Free!

Pilot a ship through various 3D style mazes while picking up crew members. An interesting space flight game with retro graphics and plenty of replay value. Even more if you download the extra maps the company occasionally throws out. Plus it’s completely free, so give it a try.

Racers

MotoChaser $1.99

A 3D motorcycle racer in the grand tradition of Road Rash. Easy to play, but difficult to master. It’s a well-crafted game that makes nice use of the accelerometer for steering.

Action

Alive4ever $0.99

An overhead shooter with an RPG element, the game provides plenty of zombie killing time. Think of it as a very simple version of Left4Dead. You can even play via Bluetooth with a friend.

Samurai: Way of the Warrior $2.99

It’s one of the few games in the iTunes store with beheading. Seriously. A beautifully rendered game with a rich soundtrack that allows you to cut your foes in half. Take on enemies in the story line or in a never-ending challenge mode. (Free lite version available.)

Flight Sim

F.A.S.T. $0.99

A complete combat flight sim that lets you pilot over a dozen planes across a 3D environment. Compete the challenges before taking on real people online. The missions range from very easy to hair-pulling insane.

So these are just some of the thousands of games you can find in the iTunes store. The best part about most of them is that they’re very cheap and provide hours of gameplay — something you occasionally need.

If you’d like to read more about iPhone/ iPod Touch games check out TouchArcade.com.

By Joshua Zimmerman

One of the most annoying things about the iTunes Store is the way it treats different countries. Every iTunes Account is linked to the country of origin, usually the country the credit card is from. While this isn’t a problem when you’re living in your home country, this is a big problem when you’re living in Japan because there are some iPhone applications that are only available in the Japan iTunes Store. One example is the very wonderful free weather app named Weathernews Touch. Unless you have a Japanese account, you’re not able to download this free app.

But don’t lose hope, there is a very easy, and free, way to get a Japanese iTunes account without using a credit card. (You can also use this to get access to music, movies, and TV shows in the Japanese iTunes Store as well.) Just follow these easy steps.

1. Get an e-mail address.

You need an e-mail address that is not already being used with iTunes. So if you already have an iTunes account set up, you’ll need to use a different e-mail than the one you’re already using. If you’re in need of a free e-mail account, try gmail.com.

2. Switch stores.

Open up the iTunes Store. If you’re already logged into your account, log your account out. Scroll down to the bottom of the Store. Click the country icon, and change it to Japan.

3. Find a free application.

Once in the Japanese Store, search for Weathernews Touch (or any free application). Click the FREE APP button.

4. Create your account.

A window should pop up asking you to sign into your account. Click on Create New Account. Then keep hitting “Continue” and fill out all the information. When you get to the billing section, there will be an option labeled “None”, found to the right of all the credit cards.

5. Wait.

Once you fill out everything and submit your information, you’ll have to wait for Apple to send back a confirmation e-mail. This could take a long time. Days even. So if you don’t get it right away, just relax and take a nap.

6) Verify your account & sign in.

Once Apple does e-mail you back, click on the verification link. Afterwards, sign into the iTunes Japan Store using your new e-mail address and download to your heart’s content. When you’re finished with the Japan Store, log out and just scroll down to the bottom and change back to whatever county’s store you were using before.

Bonus: Buying

If for some reason you want to buy something on the store, such as a Japanese movie or music, you can easily add money without a credit card. Just head down to your local 7-Eleven and buy yourself an iTunes gift card. Then log into your Japanese iTunes account and register your gift card.

WARNING: Before posting messages about how it doesn’t work, please read the guide and try again. There is also always the chance that Apple could close this loop hole with an iTunes update. So if you’re reading this and it’s not the year 2009, you should probably try doing a Google search.

The iPhone is a popular keitai choice for foreigners in Japan (and everywhere), and there are many apps that you can find in Apple’s App Store that will help you out during your stay here. All of these apps can be downloaded using your current iTunes account – you don’t have to go to the Japanese iTunes App Store to download these! Prices, where applicable, are shown in U.S. dollars.

Maps

This one is a no-brainer, but the Maps app that comes pre-installed on your iPhone comes in very handy in Japan. You’ll need to input most places and destinations in Japanese in order for them to come up properly in the search, but that doesn’t take long to get the hang of. In a country where very few cities are laid out in a logical grid-like pattern, and where most small streets don’t even have names, iPhone’s Maps, combined with the GPS function, can be a lifesaver. On top of that, Google Streetview is available for many large cities, including Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka (not Hiroshima yet, but here’s hoping we’ll get it soon!). It will amaze your Japanese friends, and may even save your skin on a late night out in an unknown city – it certainly has for me.

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乗換案内 (Norikae Annai) – free, by Jorudan Co., Ltd.

If you’re familiar with the Hyperdia website, this is basically the same database, in a convenient (and free!) app. With this app, you can look up train schedules and ticket prices for any train line in the country, including shinkansen and local train companies (such as the Hiroshima streetcars). You can pinpoint a specific departure place and time, search for a station and then browse through the train lines and destinations accessible from there. You can even check live updates on train delays and service interruptions (this feature, however, does not allow you to specify a place or train line, and will be most useful to people in Tokyo or Kansai, as that is where most of the advisories seem to be for). This app is Japanese only.

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AroundMe – free, by Tweakersoft

AroundMe uses GPS to search for things around your current location, in a variety of categories: restaurants, banks, gas stations, hotels, etc. This is one of those rare apps that was made for America, but works just as well in Japan, too. The app itself is in English, but results will be in Japanese. Results usually come up with phone numbers, which you can call directly from the app. You can even post specific places to Twitter…if that’s your thing.

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食べログ (TabeLog) – free, by Kakukaku.com, Inc

This is the app version of tabelog.com, a Japanese web community for rating restaurants, cafes, and bars across the country. This basically works like the Restaurant search in AroundMe with three key differences. First, it’s in Japanese. Second, you can see an average rating (out of 5 stars) for each restaurant, read reviews, and see pictures where available. Third, this application is egregiously slow. If you’re standing outside a restaurant and want to check whether or not it’s any good, it would probably be faster to go in and order something than boot up this app and try to navigate to the information you want. It’s not useless, and it’s worth checking out just because it’s free, but it will test your patience.

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Kotoba! – free, by Pierre-Phi di Costanzo

A totally dynamite, invaluable, free Japanese-English dictionary. Using the Jim Breen database that is the foundation for many online and downloadable J-E dictionaries, this one is simple and works perfectly. The search function is smart, rarely turning up strange, unwanted results. Within the entry page for a word, you can access the page for its kanji, which helpfully includes stroke order. I wouldn’t mind having a dedicated kanji lookup function, based on radicals and/or stroke number, but for a free dictionary I cannot complain about all this app offers. What’s more, the entire dictionary is contained within the app, so it doesn’t need to look up your query in the online database. This means that iPod Touch users, who don’t have regular net access, can use it anytime, too.

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Kanji Flip – $5.99, by Andre Khromov

This is a flashcard-based kanji learning program. You can select your level based on the JLPT, then go through all the kanji. After you flip over a card and check the kanji’s reading and meaning, you tell the program whether you got that one right or wrong. Based on this, the program files away ones you have already mastered, and reshuffles back into the deck ones that you still need to work on. It’s a smart system, and it works well for a lot of people…or so I hear! I lack the discipline to stick with it, but I know other people here who swear by it. For vocabulary, you can also try Japanese Flip, by the same developer, also $5.99.                                                                                             .

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TV Listings – free, by Katsumi Kishikawa

In case you get the urge to turn on your TV and attempt to find something watchable on the Japanese channels, this app is here to help. Assuming you are connected to the network (sorry, iPod Touch people), it will automatically pick up your location and the time, and show you what’s being broadcast for the next few hours on all the basic channels. Depending on where you live you might not get all the channels listed, so you’ll have to decipher which ones you actually get. In addition to the name of the show, you get a full description of today’s episode, including what guests, musical acts, etc., are appearing. I know a lot of foreigners here don’t bother with Japanese TV because so much of it is rubbish, but I recommend this app nevertheless…you never know what you might find! In Japanese only. FYI, it has a rather low rating on the iTunes App Store, apparently because many of the staggeringly brilliant downloaders didn’t bother to read the description and see that it is FOR JAPAN ONLY, and gave it a poor rating based on their confusion.

Gengou Free – free, by Masayuki Akamatsu

And for the man who has everything, how about a converter between the Japanese and Gregorian calendars? If you’re looking at some ancient Japanese document, dated Meiji 37, and you’re dying to know when that really was…bust out this app, and the answer is right there – 1904! It’s one of those apps that you might not ever really need…but it couldn’t hurt to have. It’s also available as a paid app, called just “Gengou”. For 99 cents, you get basically the same app, but it covers all 247 eras in Japanese history, going all the way back to Taika 1 (A.D. 645). Both of these apps are in English.