Phone Apps for Japan

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh it's been a while since I posted...

As you may or may not know I was accepted to a university last month so there is a ton of paperwork stuff to do and that has been taking up a lot of my free time. Now I have most of the immediate stuff out of the way and have met a lovely roommate who I am excited to meet come September 😁.

So during this time I have been trying to sort out some of the details of my Japan trip and one thing that is nice about this mobile phone era is that there are apps for pretty much everything, and many of them are quite helpful. You are probably saying "Juno! Your phone won't work in Japan!" However, I have been doing my research and I will make a blog post about that soon 😉. I guess this is a little bit of putting the cart before the horse but downloading apps is more fun than searching through phone plans.

At the moment, I have these put together:

So let's go through them and I'll tell you why I put them there.

LINE: From what I can tell, it is basically the main way of contacting people in Japan. It's essentially texting from what I can tell. I have this so I can contact some friends here and hopefully for when I make friends in Japan.

Translate: So while google translate doesn't have a great reputation (google translate sings exists for a reason), but for Japanese it has this really cool function where you can point your camera at kanji and it will tell you what it means (tested that out a bit here). I also often use it while doing Japanese homework and I don't want to dig through my papers or textbook to find a word.

Discover: Basically it's just an app for Discover card. Discover doesn't have foreign transaction fees and I believe no foreign ATM fees as well. It is also something students with no credit like myself can get. However, I don't know how many places or ATMs in Japan will take Discover.

First Tech: It's an app from the bank I use (also yeah I'm a west coast child). Basically this is so I can keep track of my finances while overseas. This bank also offers cards that have no foreign transaction or ATM fees and is through MasterCard, which while it may or may not be accepted more places than Discover at least it is another option.

Skype: This is so I can stay in touch with my friends back home. I usually just message people on here but I could also video call as well, but in general I do that on my computer.

Google Maps: Apparently Google Maps works in Japan and since I know how to use it I am inclined to want to use it to navigate.

Japan Travel: It is a train app that is in English. Basically you just put in where you are and where you want to go and it will tell you what trains to take and how much it will cost. Still a little confused on how to use it but I am playing with it to get a feel for how it works.

And there you go! I may add or remove apps from this list as I find what is useful and what isn't, but for now this is what I am going with.