Today’s question is: What are the most useful apps for visiting Japan?
What apps do you use frequently when visiting Japan? What is your go-to app for transportation? What is the best app for earthquake warnings? Which app helped you deal with Japanese menus?
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5 comments
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**JMA website** and **Yurekuru Call** for emergency situations – helped me significantly with assessing, whether an earthquake is ‘just go back to sleep’, or ‘be concerned’ and ‘evacuate’.
**Japan Travel by Navitime** or **Jorudan** for all your transportation needs.
Japan Official Travel App is a good Hyperdia replacement – it has a train route search feature that lets you filter out Nozomi and Mizuho Shinkansen. You can actually select any kind of JR Pass or regional pass and it will filter train options accordingly, and it tells you which carriage to get on as well. It’s fairly easy to use once you get the hang of it, and it’s run by JNTO so the information is legit.
Wanderlog is my preferred itinerary planner. It is not without its flaws and the app experience is definitely inferior to the desktop website, but it’s the best and most fully-featured I’ve found so far.
The Google Lens camera feature on Google Translate works on a surprising variety of written Japanese – stylised/handwritten included.
Google translate is super helpful. The camera translate function is pretty good- it definitely doesn’t get close to everything, but it’s better than struggling if you don’t know the language.
And I’ve already seconded the Japan travel by navitime app but it’s so, so good! It will help you transport wise. You can filter routes by travel passes, it’s all in english, it’s super easy to use.
Google Maps and Google Translate is all you’ll need.