I’m on the final countdown to my Japanese trip.
I’ve spent many hours trying to learn the language on Duolingo and watching various TV shows and movies to get myself up to speed before we leave. I finally got around to reading through the various trip notes sent to us over the past six months by the tour company. The recommended exercise routine that we’re supposed to have been doing to get prepared for the hiking days is terrifying. My friends have been reassuring me after my panicked texts yesterday that it’s aimed at unfit Americans and I hope they’re right. I don’t want to go through another experience like our bush walk a fortnight ago that just about broke us.
A useful tip they did provide a couple of months ago that I wish I’d known about (except it was hidden deep within a batch of bumf I was just not motivated enough to trawl through) is a phone app that will do real time translations for you, for spoken language. It’s called VoiceTra. In fact, just typing that word here on my iPad produced a little microphone symbol on the page and it then started to type words I was saying! Never underestimate AI is the lesson I’m taking from this.
Mind you, it’s not perfect. I just tried to use google translate on a phrase I thought I heard from Duolingo.
I’m starting to think sticking with English is going to be the least fraught option for our upcoming travels, unless I want things to get quite a bit more adventurous than I’m currently anticipating.