iPhone-chan (or as I call my iPhone: ai-chan) tries to detect words contextually (I think…), but any non-standard character usages you manage to get into the system are quickly forgotten.

Fortunately, there’s a workaround. And don’t worry, you don’t need to jailbreak your phone to get it to work.

The answer? use the iPhone address book.

When typing in Japanese, your iPhone uses names and readings from your address book as a kind of second dictionary for its text auto-complete. This was a very smart way to program the iPhone since the most common reason to use non-standard kanji/words to begin with is because they’re used that way in a proper name (which, if it’s someone/someplace/somewhere you know, would probably be in your address book anyway).

1. The first word you want to enter (kanji)
2. The reading for the first word that you want to use to access it
3. The second word (in this case, a custom kaomoji)
4. The reading to bring up the second word

Of course, this is great news for us. It means we can create dummy entries in our address book for words we want to register in the iPhone dictionary. You can use both the first and last name fields to enter your custom words, meaning you can register 2 words per entry.

The downside is that this creates an entry in your address book that weighs your address book down with irrelevant information. So it’s your call; if there’s a word you use often that you want to be in your dictionary, consider using this method. But be warned that overdoing it will leave you with a really untidy address book.

Works like a charm.

There are a couple 辞書登録 (dictionary registration) apps at the (Japanese) iTunes app store but all they all use this same principle of adding to the address book. They just try to make the process of adding and removing words easier.

There is, however, one Japanese jailbreak app which add words and phrases directly to the iPhone. But unless you really need the functionality and you’re pretty good with both computers and Japanese, sticking with the address book workaround is probably your better option.

Nooooooooooo!!!!! But, but, but… I downloaded it from the US store… I pay for my apps and songs (songs which I wouldn’t have known about if it weren’t for Pandora!) with US dollars using my US credit card and… I’m a US citizen!!! I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed.

It turns out, because of copyright licensing issues, Pandora blocks access from IPs that are outside the United States. Fortunately there exists a way to use Pandora anyway.

The technology is called VPN (Virtual Private Network). Primarily intended to increase information security when browsing the internet, VPNs act as a proxy between you and everything you connect to, so if your VPN is located in the US, then Pandora will think you are accessing from within the US. ラッキー！

iPhone supports 3 different VPN protocols, and the ones we are interested are L2TP and PP2p. Don’t worry, I don’t know what that means either.

Set up your VPN

First you’ll need an account on a VPN server that is based inside the US. Hotspotshield offers a free L2TP VPN specifically intended for iPhone. Click the link to go to the site, where they provide you all the information you need to get your VPN set up. It takes 5 minutes.

After you have your VPN information set up, just switch it on in your settings. Once the little VPN logo shows in your iPhone status bar, open Pandora and you’ll be able to use it without any problems at all. Woohooo!!!

However…

You’ll probably notice that when connecting from Japan, Hotspotshield’s free VPN frequently disconnects–every 20 minutes or so. It holds a signal about as well as Stephen Hawking holds a cup of coffee. And since Pandora checks your IP after every few songs, if you don’t have a stable VPN, Pandora can be a bother to use. You get what you pay for.

You’ll notice on my VPN list I have a Witopia account. For $40 a year (a mere $3.33 a month), they offer a PP2p (setup is identical to L2TP) service that will hold its ground much more reliably than the free L2TP from Hotspotshield. It’s not perfect: I usually get one disconnect shortly after I start using it each day, but once I reconnect after that I can use it for several hours at a time without a disconnect.

I’m not affiliated with Witopia in any way other than being their customer and am getting no compensation or benefit for recommending them. Yes, there are other VPNs out there that might be better, and I could get a refund from Witopia (they have a 30-day money back guarantee) and go try some of the others, but their VPN is sufficiently problem free for me that I don’t feel an urge to go through the work of trying another.

Make it even better

Even a rare disconnect can be frustrating if you are using a non-Jailbroken iPhone, because this means you need to exit Pandora… go into settings… general… network… turn the vpn on… wait for the connect… … … go back to Pandora… blah blah blah… However, with a jailbroken iPhone, you can get SBSettings (anyone jailbreaking their iPhone should really have this anyway), and a VPN switch plugin for SBSettings. Once you’ve got these, you simply swipe your finger across the iPhone status bar to open it, and press one button to (re)activate your VPN. You don’t even need to leave Pandora!

(My SBS Settings panel (Glasklart theme) with the VPN switch)

So, the magical formula for enjoying Pandora on your Japanese iPhone is: Quality US-based VPN + Jailbreak (SBSettings + SBSettings VPN Toggle). Enjoy!

One last thing

Starting December 2009, Softbank began limiting bandwidth for heavy data users on their 3G network. This applies to users who exceed about 1.2GB of data transfer per month. One hour of Pandora will run you about 15-30 megabytes of transfer depending on how many songs you skip, so keep that in mind as you enjoy your tunes.  (Original press release in Japanese)

Like many foreigners in Japan, my credit card’s billing address is in my home country (US), so I’m not able to access the Japanese app store. Well, not without some fiddling around, at least (check out Wide Island View’s article: How to access Japan-only apps for more info…). In any case I haven’t gotten around to trying to access the Japanese app store yet, so for this article I’ll keep things simple: all these apps can be downloaded from the US app store.

1. 乗換案内 (Norikae Annai)

Developer: Jorudan Co., Ltd.
Price: FREE
App Store: Get Norikae Annai at the iTunes store
uquery link: Norikae Annai

This one’s a no-brainer. Next to phone calls and email, finding train times is one of the most important functions that a mobile device in Japan needs to be able to execute. While on most traditional Japanese phones this is achieved by bookmarking the site, then visiting it whenever you need information, this iPhone application streamlines the process.

Screenshots

Note: Good train-finding services in Japan are only available in Japanese. This app is not an exception.

If you’re a traveler just visiting Tokyo for a few days, try the English-capable app Tokyo Underground for navigating around inner Tokyo (it’s more of a guide than a train finder). However I can’t offer any detailed opinion on it since I haven’t tried it (I don’t live in Tokyo).

2. QR コード (QR Code)

Developer: Ryo Shimizu
Price: FREE (Pay-version upgrade $0.99)
App Store: Get QR Code at the iTunes store
uquery link: QR コード

Japan has two mobile traditions that other countries have yet to really pick up on. One is infrared (赤外線) data transfer (for swapping contact information quickly) and the other is QR codes. While the iPhone doesn’t have infrared capabilities, you can get this app which will whip up a QR Code containing your contact information for someone with a traditional Japanese mobile phone to scan (don’t worry, Japanese mobile phones are light-years ahead of current iPhone apps for being able to successfully decode QRs).

While primarily useful for giving your contact information, you may also want to read some QR data from time to time and my experience (I’ve tried about 5 different apps) is that this app also offers the most reliable reader. See the screenshots below for proof that it works.

Screenshots

The paid version of this app offers you the ability to do stuff with the information read from a QR code. For example, if it reads someone’s contact info, you’ll have the option to add that to your address book… or if the QR code contains a web URL, you’ll be able to jump to the URL automatically. In the free version it just shows you the raw data. Since I use the app primarily to give my contact info to others, I haven’t upgraded yet.

3. 顔文字挿入 (FaceMail)

Developer: n1system ltd.
Price: FREE (Pay-version upgrade $3.99)
App Store: Get FaceMail Free at the iTunes store
uquery link: 顔文字挿入Free

＼(^o^)／ わぁいわぁい！！iPhoneで顔文字が使える～！
(゜∀゜)　え？何・・・？　(￣□￣;)!!　3.99ドル！！！高ぇ。
(●д●) 困っちゃうな・・・。

If you like to use Japanese kaomoji (faces made using various characters), then this is the app for you. You start drafting an email with this app and can insert various faces from different categories, and then either copy and paste them into another app or send your email draft with faces to your regular email app to finish.

Screenshots

You get access to some faces (such as the ones I used above) for free, but a much bigger selection with the pay version and you can even add your own custom faces. I really want this app but I’m not sure yet if I want it enough to pay $4 for it. Might wait for it to go on sale or something… hmmm…

4. らじおたっち (LadioTouch)

Developer: Kawauso.com
Price: FREE
App Store: Get LadioTouch at the iTunes store
uquery link: らじおたっち

It’s no Pandora but at least this Japanese internet radio app doesn’t give me any problems because of my region. (If anyone knows of a better Japanese internet radio app, please let me know)

Screenshots

I’m not an expert on internet radio so this comparison might be completely wrong… but the way it works reminds me of how shoutcast radio stations felt like 8 years ago or so. You can’t skip songs, and you might have to check through a few channels before you get a decent signal and something that is actually playing music rather than talk radio. Although on the other hand Japanese talk radio could be a good way to improve your Japanese…

I wonder if this app works outside Japan?

5. SkyBook

Developer: aill
Price: $3.99
App Store: Get SkyBook at the iTunes store
uquery link: SkyBook

What you say?! 7000 Japanese classic short stories and novels by authors like Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, Natsume Soseki, Dasai Osamu and Mori Ougai?! On iPhone?! YES, please!!

This app allows you to search and download from a huge collection of free (= copyright expired or copyright released by author) fiction and non-fiction titles at Japan’s Aozora Bunko (the 7000 titles are not automatically available to you for offline reading, you have to download them from within the app). But in fact what SkyBook does is not what sets it apart, as there are a number of apps that access the same collection in the same way (some for free). The beauty of this app is how well organized and presented it is. Books you download get placed on a nice slide-able bookshelf and you get great options for customizing your view (although I like the default settings best). Searching Aozora with SkyBook is also much less painstaking than with some of the other apps.

Screenshots

As a bonus tip, if you come across a word you don’t know or can’t read, touch it for two seconds to open up a search dialog for the word that goes to Goo’s dictionary (= the dictionary.com of Japan). You can look up the word quickly and then go right back to reading without ever closing the app, beautiful! This app is a must-have among must-haves for anyone with sufficient Japanese reading skill.

6. 大辞林 (Daijirin)

Developer: MONOKAKIDO Co., Ltd.
Price: $21.99
App Store: Get Daijirin at the iTunes store
uquery link: 大辞林

This app gives me an otaku-gasm every time I open it. For those of you who don’t know… Daijirin is kind of like the Webster’s or the Oxford dictionary of Japanese; it is arguably the single-most defining modern Jap-Jap dictionary there is, a truly massive tribute to the Japanese language, and this app pulls everything together perfectly for the iPhone.

Get this, all 238,000+ entries in the dictionary are laid out in a beautiful grid which you can scroll both horizontally and vertically. You can literally scan word to word across the whole language! Now that alone would be enough to keep me entertained for hours, but the dictionary has also added illustrations for many popular entries, more entries than were in the most recent print edition and a bookmark and history function to help you build your next vocabulary list. The cherry on top is that you can also select any word within a definition to jump to the definition for that word.

Screenshots

Yes, it is Japanese only, made by and for Japanese people. It may look expensive compared to most other apps, but to have this on your iPhone is worth several times what they’re asking.

Now all we need is the Daikanwa for iPhone…

7. Kotoba!

Developer: Pierre-Phi di Costanzo
Price: FREE
App Store: Get Kotoba! at the iTunes store
uquery link: Kotoba!

While it’s not the monster dictionary that Daijirin is, Kotoba! is an amazing feat in and of itself. This Japanese-English iPhone app is great for quick translations and has a surprisingly complete and reliable index of words. I honestly think this is as good as or even better than the Genius J-E dictionary that is in most people’s hand-held electronic dictionaries (but not the E-J dictionary as I will explain in a moment). I have this app, use it frequently, and highly recommend it to anyone, including all travelers, students of all levels, Japanese native speakers, and anyone else who comes into contact with Japanese on a regular basis.

I do however have a couple reservations about this program. My biggest gripe: all data is indexed by Japanese word. This is great for looking up a Japanese word in English, but not so great if you’re going the other way. A search for an English word brings up a list of difficult-to-differentiate Japanese words that contain your query in their translation/definition, and you have to check each of these entries one by one, a pretty frustrating process that can also make it easy to pick the wrong word.

Screenshots

Also, a recent update seems to have resolved a lot of issues with bad and incorrect example phrase translations. But I still can’t help but be wary when the romanizations for many sentences have had their spacing inserted by someone who clearly had no business doing so. Kotoba! does differentiate between “Certified” and regular examples, thankfully.

8. 漢字でQ (Kanji de Q)

Developer: GYRO Inc.
Price: $2.99
App Store: Get Kanji de Q at the iTunes store
uquery link: 漢字でQ

Think you’re good at kanji? Think again. This app provides a simplistic yet fun quiz-game interface to help you polish your Japanese with around 4000 難読 (nandoku = difficult to read) words. This app was intended to be challenging for Japanese natives so it’s definitely only for advanced learners.

Screenshots

This app also makes for a great party game if you’re out with Japanese people. There’s a few apps like this but this one seemed to me to have the largest and best selection of words.

9. Kamehameha

Developer: Issay Yoshida
Price: FREE
App Store: Get Kamehameha at the iTunes store… NOW!
uquery link: Kamehameha

Yeah right, as if there was any chance at all that I would not list this toy.

Screenshots

Press start to begin “charging” your Kamehameha beam, and when you’ve built up enough energy (= when you’ve struck fear into the heart of your opponent by dramatically saying ka~~me~~ha~~me~~!), then you thrust/swing your iPhone forward to release the beam (HA~~~~~!!!!!!!).

Just remember to check to make sure your iPhone has its usb cable unplugged first… and be careful not to actually hurl your several hundred dollar 3GS into a concrete wall or your friend’s forehead.

10. TSUZUMIN

Developer: Tempus Fugit, Inc.
Price: FREE
App Store: Get TSUZUMIN at the iTunes store
uquery link: TSUZUMIN

Instant Japanese atmosphere. I love these sounds.

Final Word

Well, that’s all for now. If I find any more awesome Japanese apps around the app store I’ll be sure to let everyone know. I might post a follow-up article on apps from the Japanese store once I get around to figuring out how to get in… anyway, follow me on twitter since that’s the one place I will definitely post cool apps I find, even if I don’t get around to blogging about them.

Oh and by the way, all of these apps are compatible with 3.0.1 OS. I also wanted to try 食べログ but it told me I need 3.1 and I’m too lazy to go through re-jailbreaking my iPhone…

Further Reading

Here are a couple links to more articles around the internet with Japan-related iPhone app info. Happy surfing!

• A guide to useful iPhone apps in Japan by Wide Island View
• How to access Japan-only apps, also by Wide Island View
• Roundup of Japanese grammar/vocab study iPhone apps