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Yamada, some things you’ll want to take away from this. One is the usage of ではありません vs. じゃありません. They essentially mean the same thing, but ではありません is used for writing and is a bit formal whereas じゃありません is more for speaking and is a slight contraction of ではありません. And if you want to avoid sounding textbookish in your speaking, don’t say ではありません.
As for using が or は、that again just comes down to the classic of where you want to put your emphasis. I could see making cases for either way.
@vlgi: What I’ve found is that it still depends on the device, however Jellybean is supposed to have enhanced glyph support for Japanese. Some OEMs, however, (I’m looking at you Samsung) remove this for reasons I can’t begin to fathom and so for some devices rooting is still necessary to get the right fonts.
EDIT: I found this site: http://www.fontomizer.net/ So it is possible to install the DroidSansJapanese.ttf font and set it as your default font system-wide, however I have noticed it does make the non-Japanese text look a little different. Not sure if I like it but I guess it’s one way without rooting.
You can drag one deck into another and then that deck becomes a subdeck. For textfugu, I first created an empty “Textfugu” deck and then two additional ones “Textfugu Vocab” and “Textfugu Sentences.” Then I dragged those into the Textfugu deck. After that, each time I import additional decks I just drag them into either vocab or sentences and that keeps them nice and organized the way I like them. There’s a fair amount of flexibility in how you can do it, I think.
If it’s HTC it is likely Android, which if that is the case you can easily find an IME in the Google Play market. Either GO Keyboard or the Google Japanese Keyboard are both fairly good options for that.
You know, you can always unsubscribe from those emails. That’s what I did after I got tired of hearing from them every day, and it’s been quite ever since then.
Yeah, you really need to do some homework to determine if renting a phone is going to be beneficial for you. For me, I’ve got AT&T and as far as international data roaming plans they actually have some decent offerings, provided you are frugal with how much data you use. 120MB for $30 may not seem like much, but when you compare it to $20/MB without a roaming plan then it’s actually quite reasonable. I mostly used it for GPS / maps, web searches, a little chat, and the occasional translation and wound up only using around 100MB over the two weeks I was there. I made certain NOT to stream video / audio or upload pictures unless connected to Wi-Fi and that helped conserve data a lot.
So I compared this vs. how much I would’ve paid to rent a phone and determined that renting a phone would’ve actually cost me more. It worked out quite well, the only trick is I had to be sure to remember to turn off the roaming service after I got back so I wouldn’t get charged for additional months that I wouldn’t be able to use.
As for not having Wi-Fi in the hotels, it is true that most hotels in Japan don’t but they do have LAN ports. So with that, just bring a Wi-Fi router and connect it to the LAN port in your hotel room.
It is true that data access isn’t very convenient for foreign travelers in Japan, but don’t mind that too much. Less time playing around with iPads and other tech means more time enjoying Japan itself. ;-)
The more examples you see and work with, the easier it gets. I remember a time when it was very similar for me, but rest assured that it does get better with practice and effort.
Joel, yeah I do see what you mean that Suica can be used outside of the greater Tokyo area. I hadn’t noticed that before. On my first trip to Tokyo, my wife helped set me up with a pasmo and I never looked much into the differences then.
Vivian, I can recommend a few places you can look around. In Shibuya there is a Tower Records not far from the train station there. In Harajuku you might find some fashion shops related to J-pop, and definitely Akihabara if you want to shop around for figurines.
As for train passes, I didn’t notice much that was there that was very economical for a week or two long stay, however you’ll definitely want to look into something called pasmo. It’s a touchless payment system that you load up with yen and makes paying for subway and train fares very easy and convenient. There is a small deposit to pay to get one, which is refundable but if you plan on returning for multiple trips I do recommend keeping it. You can find more info about it here.
