I am facing four long-haul flights over the next months (22h x 2 and 12h x 2) and I realized that I could try to spend some of that time studying Japanese.
My normal study methods rely heavily on internet connection: Wanikani, Anki, Genki 1 and Minna no nihongo for which I am googling words and grammar questions. With both Wanikani and Anki, you can only do so much as your reviews and new words which is not so compatible with a long-haul flight.
I want to ask if you have any tips for studying offline and/or during long-haul flights? Any good resources? offline apps? Anyone have experience with studying on long flights?
Two ideas: I’ve used memrise on long flights - I’m not sure if it’s a pro feature or not (I signed up to pro for some amount of time to see if I liked it better than the free version) but there’s a way to download the whole thing for offline. There’s another thread going on right now but I forget what the title is where people are recommending JapanesePod101 podcasts, which I imagine can be downloaded in advance.
I used Lingodeer the last two times I flew. I would make sure you download anything right before boarding. I also had Pimsleur saved in my phone. I know on some flights you can pay for wifi but Ive never done it so I dont know if the connection is good or not.
So I found a solution that helped me to do WaniKani while traveling / without WiFi. Using an iPhone/iPad, download the App “Tsurukame”. It’s fairly new, but it links with WaniKani and has the review schedule / lessons / progression status available offline. When you do manage to find an internet hotspot, just open the app and let it update your account… all of your progress will be recorded on the site as if you had done it online! It’s really handy, especially for me since I’m in the desert right now where there’s barely a whiff of cell/wifi signal to be found.
Minna no nihongo has an app for listening exercises. They offer the sound clips for free, but the exercises (i.e. the books) you can order in a digital version through the app as well, I think. Here is a link to the Play Store app. This is the one that goes parallel to the first book, but there should also be one for book 2.
EDIT: just redownloaded the apps for myself. Both the first and second book of the listening sxercises aee available, and adding the script is very cheap (only €1,09 in my region). But the exercise book I think you still have to buy the old fashioned way. Can also listen off line. Also the questions are included in the listening tasks, though, so very handy even without the physical book
Thanks all for all the great comments so far! Looks like a lot of good suggestions!
Specific comments:
Memrise - I used to use this a lot many years ago, but recent years it really went south with everything in my opinion. You have to pay to get the offline mode.
Lingodeer - I only briefly meddled around with this app roughly a year ago, i didn’t know you could download the full course offline! I’ll definitely give this a go! How far does it go on the upper levels?
Minna no Nihongo app - I didn’t know about this! I even bought an external DVD-drive to play the files from the disk! This could probably be super useful for me to repeat chapters I already studied!
