iPhone Translate, Kyoto Book, Yen Collapse?

iPhone’s Built-in Translate App is Amazing

iPhone imagine translation of cold meds in Japan

If you’ve got an iPhone, then you can read just about any sign or menu in Japan. My friend Mike Rogers made a great video to demonstrate how it works. He also explains how to use Google Translate, which is excellent. You can use either of them to translate anything you point your camera at (although they may have trouble with “cursive” handwritten script).

How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart

If you’re looking for a book to take on the road with you to Japan, you might consider Florentyna Leow’s excellent How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart. It’s a narrative of her time in Kyoto and - spoiler alert - it’s not necessarily Kyoto that broke her heart. Flory’s description of a jazz kissaten (coffee shop) in Kyoto is so good it will make your clothes smell like smoke. You can buy it directly from Emma Press. Flory has written for InsideKyoto and TrulyTokyo, including this excellent piece: How to Eat Like a Local in Tokyo.

Is the Yen Collapsing?

One US dollar now buys you almost 155 Japanese yen. This the weakest the yen has been in 30 years and many analysts are predicting it will continue to weaken. And while a sudden collapse is highly unlikely, there’s no question that things in Japan will seem very cheap to travelers from the United States. And this is on top of the fact that Japan has had comparatively little inflation in recent years compared to Western countries.

According to the website Numbeo, the cost of living in Tokyo is equal to that of Mexico City, Porta (Portugal) and Sofia (Bulgaria). I recently wrote a page about this on InsideKyoto called: Japan Is Cheaper Than You Think. Here’s a graph from that page showing hotel prices in US dollars (and this was before the recent plunge in the yen):

The fact is, there has never been a better time to visit Japan. My planning guide will help you get started.