In order to change the application as a whole, you gotta relaunch the whole app. Close it entirely and reopen.
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Whaaaaaaaaaa? Do you know how many tabs on each window I have? Screw, I don’t care that much
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Forgive me for jumping to conclusions here, but wouldn’t it be possible just to type it in manually into your translator? I do it with Spanish all the time, with accents and everything.
lol we use browsers in very similar ways, though I have been TRYING to cut down on tabs. In any case, there’s a setting that tells Chrome to reopen all your previous tabs after you close it. And the language settings box has a button called “relaunch” that shows up after you change the language that keeps your tabs open (or should) when you click it to relaunch the app.
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I know, but I just wanted to see it. I can’t actually read Japanese.
I’ll screenshot for you hold on lol
Of course, and I do that. But when you’re trying to get shit done, it can be infuriating. I have raged at my work computer quite a bit over language related issues–or used to at least–again, it’s better now.
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In each case I’ve taken the screenshot RIGHT before hitting relaunch, which is why it’s saying in both pics that it’s displaying in the other language.
It kinda scared me off lol XD
yup, glad I didn’t do that
This would be even more fun if the OS language is Japanese and the messages contain unfamiliar Kanji! 
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I get ads on Youtube from Trivago IN JAPANESE!
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Oh yes. That is where all the fun comes in. 
On Android, I use this as a quick solution: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.camel.corp.universalcopy
I don’t know of anything for iUsers, sorry 
Now that is boss. I wanna see those.
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Yes, the girl isn’t Japanese (at least it doesn’t seem hafu to me either).
Ah, perfect! The one that I saw just before this kinda segued into this one. It shows a preview of the one you posted.
I instantly saw all preconceptions of foreigners in Japan dissolve before me.
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Apparently she also sings 
(and dances)
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Thank you everyone for sharing your experiences and advice with me. I really appreciate all the input. I’ve decided to start with Facebook. I have that changed now, and a lot of it is katakana English, so it seems a pretty good place to start. I’ll leave my OS alone (for now). 
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Gonna put my opinion. Change it right now, because why not? You can always revert back. I bet you will be overwhelmed at first and often you will set it back to english to do things. PC has a lot of gairaigo so it will make things easier. In the end main point of this is not to be able to read all icons on the screen, but to get used to and not be afraid of large amount of japanese words in front of you.
FB is also a fine place to start.
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I just took a look, and apparently you can select Kansai dialect on Facebook. That’s interesting.
The buttons for changing the language when set to 日本語 are 「変更を保存」and「キャンセル」
In 日本語関西 they are 「変更したとこ保存すんで」and「やめとく」
Kansai dialect feels so foreign when all you study is standard Japanese.
Also, good idea. I think I’ll keep Facebook on Japanese for a while.
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There was an interview with Natalie Emmons to the Japan News (Yomiuri Shinbun) around a year ago (if I’m not mistaken). I can’t remember much of the article, but one of the main topics was her Nihongo fluency.
When her first CMs went on air in Japan, people obviously became really impressed and many even thought that the commercials were dubbed by a native.
From the little bits that I still remember, she said that she learned/improved mainly (I think she said “solely”, but I can’t remember for sure…) by singing and watching lots of TV shows, especially dramas.
A shame that the Japan News deletes their articles after a couple of weeks…
EDIT: A mea culpa, the interview was for the Japan Times and you can read it here
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I wouldn’t recommend it - not because you might have difficulties reading things, but more because of a support reason.
If something on your pc/phone went wrong, you wouldn’t be able to look up instructions on what to do (computing terms can be very very different in different languages), or how to explain the problem to a tech person.
(This is why my everything is in English despite it not being my native language.)