If you’re interested in learning the language, but don’t have 3 years to prepare:
Jisho.org is an online English-Japanese dictionary that helps you find words by selecting radicals from a chart. You can learn to break down 99% of common kanji into their radicals within a week and then it’s a matter of selecting 2 or 3 radicals in the chart and matching the picture. Finding all the kanji in a sentence (or more likely, the three kanji on a menu item) should give you a decent idea of the full meaning. Now you point at the menu, say the standard question from your phrase book, give a polite nod, hold out your money at the appropriate time, and you’re nihongo jouzu.
Edit: I would only recommend this method if we’re not using Google Lens. Lens is way faster and you can still decipher the menu with your dictionary after your food arrived.
While i ment at home. Im going to be honest giving it a few moments thought. Since your already traveling you likely have a laptop. A ryzen laptop while expensive. Arn’t really that much more then a good work station/gaming laptop both are fucking over priced as fucking hell right now to be fair. But your paying 3.5-4k either way. A ryzen laptop with lpddr is like 3800-4000 dollars for 128 gigs of ram. You could totally do a local model right from your hotel room.
Frankly i would say this is a more realistic option after the bubble goes pop and you can pick up something like this for like 2000 bucks. Since the laptops tend to be really nice reguardless and at least justifiable around that price point.
What would you recommend instead of Google lens/translate?
DeepL
If you’re interested in learning the language, but don’t have 3 years to prepare:
Jisho.org is an online English-Japanese dictionary that helps you find words by selecting radicals from a chart. You can learn to break down 99% of common kanji into their radicals within a week and then it’s a matter of selecting 2 or 3 radicals in the chart and matching the picture. Finding all the kanji in a sentence (or more likely, the three kanji on a menu item) should give you a decent idea of the full meaning. Now you point at the menu, say the standard question from your phrase book, give a polite nod, hold out your money at the appropriate time, and you’re nihongo jouzu.
Edit: I would only recommend this method if we’re not using Google Lens. Lens is way faster and you can still decipher the menu with your dictionary after your food arrived.
Not the most ethical answer but a paid chatgpt subscription.
Even a medium sized local model can do 90% of the job now.
Just gotta set it up ahead of time so you can use it outside the house.
I travel a lot so I’m not sure I’d want to have a server running at home. Or do you mean I set it up in my hotel?
While i ment at home. Im going to be honest giving it a few moments thought. Since your already traveling you likely have a laptop. A ryzen laptop while expensive. Arn’t really that much more then a good work station/gaming laptop both are fucking over priced as fucking hell right now to be fair. But your paying 3.5-4k either way. A ryzen laptop with lpddr is like 3800-4000 dollars for 128 gigs of ram. You could totally do a local model right from your hotel room.
Frankly i would say this is a more realistic option after the bubble goes pop and you can pick up something like this for like 2000 bucks. Since the laptops tend to be really nice reguardless and at least justifiable around that price point.