The amount of japanese apps it has it insane (pardon my language here). I'm thinking of buying a 16gb one for 199$. Do you can guys think it's worth it? I'm just trying to find new ways of immersing on my commute to work/school or downtown.

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/category/...25653.aspx

Anyone use JPN apps? I know there are a lot for grammar, JLPT,music,reading,etc. So it might be a good investment (won't get an e-reader for a while. I decided I will wait till next year when they release it internationally)

I have an iPhone, and I use it for a variety of things. Yes, I think it's worth it, but it depends on you. One thing I really like is that it has a built in bilingual dictionary. You can load up a bunch of Japanese text, either from websites or anywhere you can copy and paste, and then whenever you run into a word you don't know, you can highlight it and look it up. If you set your region to Japanese, it'll be entirely in Japanese, but if it's in English, it'll give both the Japanese and English for vocab and example sentences.

For Japanese, there are a lot of apps for English learners, and there are a lot of apps in Japanese. Here are the apps I use:

ガンガンONLINE
https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/ganganon...17249?mt=8

デジタル大辞泉
https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/dejitaru...31331?mt=8

Japanese
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/japanese...64053?mt=8

JLPT 6000
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jlpt-tar...08113?mt=8

Midori
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/midori-j...31773?mt=8

RTK
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/remember...71278?mt=8

Thanks for the reply. I've heard of so many resources that are available in apps. A friend of mine showed me what he uses and I was quite surprised on how much resources are available. I would use it to help me learn more on the side(aside from the Anki). I'm trying to plug in JPN during those commute trips I take pretty much everyday(some long, some short).

Excellent list.

RTK: Are you using it to do RTK or for something else?
JLPT 6000: Does it have audio?

Sounds like it would be awesome if you had the money and felt secure about yourself to carry a high costing device as such around with you. I'd go for it. I'd be personally happy enough with taking a book or comic volume with me, but, with an Ipod touch/whatever, you can take, what, a few thousand books/audio books with you?

I don't know, it depends on how much you're going to get out of it. 200 dollars might sound like a lot (does to me) but how often do you spend 18 bucks on a six pack (Alcohol is expensive in Australia- oh, and pretend you drink for the moment, if you actually don't, or aren't legally of age to yet, or whatever ) for something which provides enjoyment for a few hours and leaves you feeling both crap afterwards and often with an empty wallet (and possible STD)? Might be a bit extreme, lol. How about the usually insurance company marketing ploy of "how often do you spend [x] dollars on a cup of coffee every day- and for what? [etc., etc., etc.]"

uisukii Wrote:Sounds like it would be awesome if you had the money and felt secure about yourself to carry a high costing device as such around with you. I'd go for it. I'd be personally happy enough with taking a book or comic volume with me, but, with an Ipod touch/whatever, you can take, what, a few thousand books/audio books with you?

I don't know, it depends on how much you're going to get out of it. 200 dollars might sound like a lot (does to me) but how often do you spend 18 bucks on a six pack (Alcohol is expensive in Australia- oh, and pretend you drink for the moment, if you actually don't, or aren't legally of age to yet, or whatever ) for something which provides enjoyment for a few hours and leaves you feeling both crap afterwards and often with an empty wallet (and possible STD)? Might be a bit extreme, lol. How about the usually insurance company marketing ploy of "how often do you spend [x] dollars on a cup of coffee every day- and for what? [etc., etc., etc.]"

I'm good with it. I carry expensive all the time (laptop,phone,my notes from school(screwed if I loose them) and textbooks especially). I'll probably buy one mid-day tomorrow or so and try it out. If I enjoy it a lot, I'll keep it. If not, return it.

Sounds like your describing but I won't say it.....lol. I buy coffee a few times a week(McDonald's or Tim Hortons over here in Canada)

I do have money but it's because I work a lot (hope to get some more extra money from translation work but that would add 2 jobs+translation into the mix but main reason is just so it can handle my everyday costs of basic leisure (coffee,etc).

If you have the money, you would probably be better off buying a smartphone. You would have 1 less device to carry.

Also, you can consider buying non-Apple products too. With other brands, you can have less expensive portable multimedia players or phones where you can use microSD cards for storage, and wouldn't need Itunes. Only Apple uses Ios, while most other brands use Android, so if buy an Apple PMP and you ever decide to buy a smartphone in the future, if you decide for anything but an Iphone, you'll lose all your apps and will have to download or buy new ones. Besides, you can't take an Ithing internal storage with you, unlike microSD cards used by other brands.


Another use for your mobile device is as an offline website reader. You can install offline RSS readers and something like Pocket for the odd sites that don't have RSS support. That way you can save your favorite Japanese websites and read them whenever you have some spare time. That can sum up to hours and hours of reading practice if you spend time commuting or waiting in line at the bank and other places.

delta Wrote:Excellent list.

RTK: Are you using it to do RTK or for something else?
JLPT 6000: Does it have audio?

I do RTK in Anki, but I like to use the app for quick referencing. For JLPT 6000, yes, it has great audio, but it does cost a bit of money. The app itself is free and you get to sample 100 vocab with sentences, but then it's $2.99 for every 500 sentences. I bought all the N2 stuff, extracted the audio, and am now working on making into an Anki, which will probably take all year at the rate I'm currently going.

I've recommended the iPod Touch for a while, but I think Apple is really milking people with the latest pricing, which doesn't go down easy given recent news of their tax-dodging. I was desperate to update the 4th gen one I have, as OS updates seem to be designed to make it unusably slow, but I don't think I want to be any more invested in Apple's ecosystem.

That said, I don't think you'll be disappointed with the device. It's very sleek and light, with a responsive (at first) OS that will rarely cause you problems. It'll probably provide everything you want and many things you may not have expected (cheap newspaper subscription, graphical calculator, offline Wiki, Kindle, good web-browsing experience etc), but you might want to look at smartphone options first.

prink Wrote:

delta Wrote:Excellent list.

RTK: Are you using it to do RTK or for something else?
JLPT 6000: Does it have audio?

I do RTK in Anki, but I like to use the app for quick referencing. For JLPT 6000, yes, it has great audio, but it does cost a bit of money. The app itself is free and you get to sample 100 vocab with sentences, but then it's $2.99 for every 500 sentences. I bought all the N2 stuff, extracted the audio, and am now working on making into an Anki, which will probably take all year at the rate I'm currently going.

What's wrong with the Core 6000 audio? I have that deck on my iPod for occasional shadowing practice (audio -> kanji).

My top apps are Anki, Japanese (dictionary), 大辞林, AFPBB News, and MT2 (free 2ch まとめ app). I just wish there was something comparable to the Guardian newspaper app in Japanese. I've tried everything I can find on there and they're barely better than a blog. AFPBB has readable stories, but none of them are about Japan.

Javizy Wrote:

prink Wrote:

delta Wrote:Excellent list.

RTK: Are you using it to do RTK or for something else?
JLPT 6000: Does it have audio?

I do RTK in Anki, but I like to use the app for quick referencing. For JLPT 6000, yes, it has great audio, but it does cost a bit of money. The app itself is free and you get to sample 100 vocab with sentences, but then it's $2.99 for every 500 sentences. I bought all the N2 stuff, extracted the audio, and am now working on making into an Anki, which will probably take all year at the rate I'm currently going.

What's wrong with the Core 6000 audio? I have that deck on my iPod for occasional shadowing practice (audio -> kanji).

There's nothing wrong with Core 6000. I use that too, along with other audio sentence decks as well, which is why it'll take me so long to make the JLPT Target 6000 deck. Despite the similar names, Core 6000 and JLPT 6000 are entirely different. The JLPT Target 6000 app has more complex sentences, faster audio that is closer to native speaking speed and uses higher level vocab and grammar from N2 and N1.