Yes indeed I am.
And I bought an iPhone. For anyone who speaks Japanese (or for that matter, Chinese or any other language which requires more than the average a-z), I can inform you that which I had wished somebody out there had informed me in a straightforward manner when I started digging into this over a year ago.
Yes, you can use Japanese and Swedish (or whatever combination) on the iPhone simultaneously. I can get my åäö’s which my Japanese cell couldn’t spit out for the life of it (me), and I can get 日本語 to slither out of it as well. You can send SMS’es within Sweden in Japanese, and in general, you can use them as you would in Japan, except that they also properly support Swedish.
In case you are confuzzled about how to do this, the Swedish (with presumed English translation in parentheses) menu alternatives for getting Japanese enabled is as follows:
Inställningar (Settings) > Allmänt (General) > Internationellt (International) > Tangentbord (Keyboard) > Japanska (Japanese) > QWERTY or Kana (whichever you prefer).
Welcome home! (Er, except that I’m not there, but here in the UK. I also arrived home from Japan on the 20th.)
I thought we’d talked about the iPhone in a post before, but perhaps I’m mistaken. I’ve had one since it became available in Japan 18 months ago, partly for exactly the reason that you can use several languages at once. (Currently I have English, Japanese Kana and Russian in use.)
I had to pay though, as I still had some contract remaining with Softbank when I left Japan. But I unlocked it once I got here, for use on other mobile networks, and now have it running on Orange.
If you haven’t already looked into it, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Japanese-English dictionary called ‘Japanese’ (http://www.codefromtokyo.com/japanese). It’s a superb piece of software, and has all but relegated my dedicated Casio dictionary to the desk drawer, as I have the iPhone with me all the time.
Hey Mark!
Thanks, and welcome home to you too.
We never did talk about the iPhone, or I wouldn’t have been all confused about whether it would work in Sweden — or if we did, I never realized it would let me use Japanese in Sweden. Or Swedish in Japan. That was my main worry — if I bought it in Japan, I might not be able to write proper Swedish, which would frankly be unacceptable. But then I’d heard about people using iPhones bought in Japan, in Sweden, so I figured it was “fixable”. Just not sure if both were possible.
The Japanese app looks awesome. And a bit expensive. *cringe* I’m going to mull over that one for awhile, but I may end up buying it in the end. They apparently had some “20% off” deal until Dec 28th, that I missed. If I’d only seen it two days ago I’m pretty sure I would’ve snatched it without hesitation. :-O
But if it’s as great as you say, maybe I’ll grab it anyway. *mulls more*
Glad you are home, safe and sound and that we caught up a bit yesterday. *hugs* all the best for 2010 my friend! xoxo