There really are no good, free apps for train transit in Japan. They all have their issues. I use Jorudan, but I realize many of you have other preferences. In addition to a new, slightly improved UI, you can now type romaji in the search box to bring up stations. The app is still only in Japanese, though.
Before, if my keyboard was set to English, typing a station was a real pain. Since Android keyboards, for some unknown reason, can't support properly Japanese and English at the same time, you have to switch keyboards to a Japanese one to search. This requires several, annoying steps. Now, you can just type the station phonetically in romaji.
What is your favorite transit android app?
Favourite? I don't have one. Anywhere I go at least (the Osaka and, occasionally, Tokyo urban areas), trains and buses run so frequently there's little point in looking up a time table. Just go to the station and take the next train that passes by.
ReplyDeleteAnd the apps I've tried (Jorudan and Google Maps, basically, though I've tested others too) fail about mapping out the best route. I can't add any personal preferences, such as a specific train line or station, so their recommendations end up completely unhelpful. In the end, I never use any of them.
grumpy as always I see :)
ReplyDeleteOnce temperatures drop below 35° again I'll try to be nice. Until then I will bite the head off anybody that comes near; the spray of blood has a cooling mist effect ^_^
ReplyDeleteHow would the personal preferences thing work in practice?
ReplyDeleteHave you tried Ekitan? Their iOS app is pretty slick. Haven't tried the Android version.
ReplyDeleteNot recently. Maybe I'll give it another look.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.japanmobiletech.com/2010/12/android-apps-for-japanese-train-search.html
Are you thinking of trying to work something like what Jan wants into your own app?
One approach would be an option saying "don't suggest this route" for each segment and station, along with a "use this when possible".
ReplyDeleteSure I'll consider it. Need to figure out what he's looking for first though.
ReplyDeleteAny way I can help. I'd be thrilled with an app that does what I want :)
ReplyDeleteSounds like you effectively want to edit edge weights in the network graph. A bit of a UI nightmare. Particularly when you want to see the edits you've made to the graph later and remove/edit them. Would you be looking to always avoid particular lines, or just segments between two particular stations? Sounds like you might want to avoid stations too. Why? If it's because you think the data the app uses is bad, maybe you should be reporting bad data instead of wanting to customize your own experience.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, my iPhone app allows you to specify lines you want to avoid on each search. It doesn't remember those choices though. The intended use case is if there are delays on a line, you can route round it.
Looks like you edited your reply while I was replying. :)
ReplyDeleteDisfavouring/favouring particular companies doesn't seem worth it since everywhere will soon use Suica.
Intermediate destinations are supported in some apps I think. Admittedly not mine but that is on my list. I think you'll get it if you upgrade to the full version of jorudan or ekitan. Not sure though.
Right now, my app is iOS only I'm afraid. It also only covers Tokyo. :( Sorry.
ReplyDeleteWell, my current example is the route between Umeda in Osaka and Sannomiya in Kobe. The JR line takes about 10% less time, but in practice it's a lot more stressful and unreliable, so I always use the Hanshin line instead. And more in general, JR doesn't accept the pass card I have, so I want to avoid them in general.
ReplyDeleteFor stations, part is personal preference. I try to take the shinkansen to and from Shinagawa rather than Tokyo for instance, as the station is better designed and a lot less stressful.
I realize the UI portion is painful. From a technical point of view I'd treat "Avoid" and "Please use" as biasing the weights by some constant (2* or 1/2 the "natural" time, say) so that they still get suggested (or avoided) if it really makes a _significant_ difference. And selecting such edits is probably decently straight-forward, but how to let people see and clear old preferences is another matter.
Interesting. I think this is definitely something I should consider carefully.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you say are the drawbacks of the Hyperdia app? I've never used anything else because I've never encountered any drawbacks with it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I tested several years ago (see link in one of the above responses), it was a clunky, buggy, and incomplete beta version that lacked a time table function and had a half baked UI that would display search results in a browser window that would, if memory manager killed the app while it was in the background, request a malformed URL and throw an error or force quit when brought back to the foreground.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, no real drawbacks ;)
waypoints = 経由駅 and it is in jorudan and most of the other ones. You can also specify if you should change at that station or just pass through
ReplyDeleteThat's because you use the Chuo line ;P
ReplyDeleteResults display in the app now as far as I can tell, and it has autocomplete if it's a station you've searched before. I never use timetables, so I wouldn't have noticed that, but it doesn't seem to have those still. All in all, I haven't found a better app!
ReplyDeleteI actually use the time table more than anything. If I'm taking a single line, I just want to know when the next few trains are leaving and if they are expresses or not.
ReplyDeleteI think what it did and probably still does is use the native browser to display results in the app. It has English, so I know a lot of people really like it.
I use Yahoo's application.
ReplyDeleteIt includes a real subway map which is much better for looking at the best route than what is proposed by the app.
It also allows searching from current location and accepts romaji as station name.
There are more functions available than on other free apps.
I don't understand why these are never allowed to be installed beyond the japanese borders. I'm going to Osaka in a week, but not allowed to install this app :(
ReplyDeleteAnd since I'm not allowed to install it I'm not allowed to write a review or leave a comment. I have no choice but to use google..
Really? they just don't show in the store? If you have root, you could probably get the J version of the play store with an user agent change.
ReplyDeleteThey show up in the store but it says "This item cannot be installed in your device's country"
ReplyDeletehttp://i.imgur.com/slOoHLN.png
I get this for ALOT of apps (games particularly). I have rooted, but I don't know exactly what you mean by a user agent change. I'll check it out though, would be nice to have access to some of these apps..
Just downloaded a few of the other apps that I haven't tried in a while. Ekitan has gotten a lot better. Still hate the icon.
ReplyDeletehttp://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=694720 this sort of thing. May or may not work. Android can also read the mobile county and network cards off the SIM, so another thing to do would be pull the SIM.
ReplyDeleteWith no SIM and a japanese proxy IP address, you should be able to do it. Don't know how you'll get the proxy address, though.
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I can probably get a proxy address, shouldn't be to much fuzz.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a good time to get some of the official google apps that I've been longing for as well haha not that I'm actually going to do anything with google magazine :)
" Since Android keyboards, for some unknown reason, can't support properly Japanese and English at the same time, you have to switch keyboards to a Japanese one to search."
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of keyboards that support both Japanese and English at the same time. Smart keyboard pro and GO keyboard are two examples. The former is an excellent English keyboard with decent Japanese support, the later has better Japanese input but isn't as strong in regards to the English side. The Samsung Japanese keyboard can also do it although it's not a favourite of mine.
Exactly. I've tried and used several, and all have the three Kana/Alpha/Numbers setup so you can type Japanese or English easily (and just like a pre-Android JP phone). I currently use the default Samsung JP keyboard, but paid ATK is great and free Open iWnn works just as well.
ReplyDeleteYes there are, and English support is an after thought on all of them. I can't comment on the paid keyboards, however.
ReplyDeleteGoogle's default keyboard works well for English and has good prediction. Google's Japanese keyboard does not. Same goes for the wnn keyboards and simeji. I have ATOK on the Fujitsu tablet, and it's English function, while better than most, is still substandard to the default android keyboard.
Sony's PO Box touch has two keyboards on the Xperia, the Japanese and the international (for English). The international is very good and has swype to type. The Japanese is also very good. It resizes keys in qwerty layout based on the next likely key and disable not functional keys to prevent annoying typos.
But the English function of the Sony Japanese keyboard is shit and doesn't support swype. Why? Why is it so hard to put all that in just one, simple keyboard?
I can't believe nobody mentioned google maps. That's the ONLY one I use.
ReplyDeletein terms of error correction, speed, options and ease-of-use, smartkeyboard pro is one of the best English keyboards out there for any system. I used to consider it the best English keyboard but a couple of others, namely swiftkey have superseded it. Swiftkey lacks Japanese support though so in terms of multi-language flexibility I still use smartkeyboard pro unless I have do a considerable amount of English input (i.e. notetaking). So far I haven't seen a system or free keyboard that matches either of those in terms of English capabilities.
ReplyDeleteGO keyboard also has quite strong English support. However it is not quite on the same level as smartkeyboard pro and definitely nowhere near swiftkey when it comes to error correction and speed. It's Japanese support is superior though; Smartkeyboard pro is decent (especially in qwerty mode) but it's dictionary is a bit basic and needs to learn a lot of user input. It also has a long-term bug that sometimes pops up when deleting Japanese characters (that results in one character too many being deleted). GO keyboard seems to have been developed with Asian character support from the beginning so it seems to be the more robust of the two in that regard.
I never used swype style keyboards as I feel regular qwerty input is far faster and more accurate but GO keyboard does offer support for it when doing English input. As far I as know smartkeyboard pro lacks swype support. I haven't dug through the options recently to confirm that though.
GO keyboard does have an ad-supported version too. Personally though I think it's always good to purchase apps even if you don't end up using them long-term. Paid apps are generally higher quality and it helps support the development community which in turn goes toward ensuring a wider range of quality software releases in the future. App costs are pretty negligible and even 50-100 purchases would barely be more than what a single software package used to cost. I know I definitely spend more than that during a night out in town...
Google Maps is great for navigation in Japan. It doesn't have a direct function for repeating routes or selecting train stations you have selected before. A very nice and quick way to get home or get to work or anywhere else for that matter, is to use the Navigation Widget that maps provides. I have a home button on my homescreen that will search for the way home from where I am right now in an instant.
ReplyDeleteA great app for people who have to leave for work in the morning is this one: http://goo.gl/wJsby
Regarding the keyboard issue: I am using swiftkeyboard and the Google Japanese IME. To quickly switch whenever I need to, I am using Tasker with the keyboardswap plugin. This will only work if you're rooted, but it's great. Personally, I have configured my proximity sensor to switch between Japanese and English keyboards. Only when the screen is on and when I am not in a call of course, touching the sensor will switch IMEs. Of course you can use all sorts of triggers for this. A flicking gesture using the motion sensor? No Problem. You could also use an NFC tag or just create a shortcut and use an app like SwipePad to switch between IMEs via an overlay menu. Also, I have configured several apps to use a specific keyboard per default. If I open Line, for instance, it will switch to a Japanese keyboard, since most of my Line contacts are Japanese. As soon as I switch back to Hangouts or Gmail, it will switch back to SwiftKey.
I hope this has helped a bit. If you need some more instructions, I'll be glad to assist.
V.
Innovative solution for keyboard switching. It just boggles the mind that we have to do all this just to use a good Japanese IME with real English input.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's that complicated at all. Switching IMEs on iOS, for instance, is a lot easier, but at the same time you don't have the same amount of flexibility. Even without manually switching, having a default IME for specific applications is a life-saver.
ReplyDelete