Hey guys! So one of the things I hear a lot about Japan is that it’s really difficult
to make Japanese friends. And usually I give advice like try joining a club, or just make
friends with one person and then you can infiltrate their friend group, and then you can make
friends with all of their friends. BUT I recently started using an app and I
found out that it’s surprisingly easy to make friends with it. So I wanted to share
that with you today.
It’s called Hello Talk. They actually contacted us and asked us if we would review their app,
and I’m glad they did because I actually really like it and I think you guys are going
to find it useful.
So it’s a language exchange app. What it does is, it matches you up with people who
natively speak the language you’re trying to learn. And you teach each other your languages.
And originally I was just going to review that function, but it turned out to be SO
EASY to make new friends with it. I joined on a Wednesday. And when you join, you create
a little profile where you can put a profile picture, your name, and your location, age,
the language you’re learning, and how good you’re at it. And you don’t have to put
all of that there by the way. Like you don’t have to put a picture of yourself. You don’t
have to tell people how old you are, or where you’re living if you feel uncomfortable
with any of that. So don’t worry about that. Anyway, I did
all of that on a Wednesday, and then when I checked it again on Friday, I had THIRTY
MESSAGES from mostly Japanese people who were all saying things like, “Hi, let’s be
friends and/or language exchange partners.” And so of course I responded to every single
one and was like YES LET’S BE FRIENDS!!
And now I’m chatting with so many people that I can’t even keep up with all of them.
And I have plans to meet someone. So it connected me to so many Japanese people. Just like right
away.
So how it works is you click “search” and look for people to do a language exchange
with through different criteria. When you click on someone’s profile, you can see
what language they speak, and what language they’re learning. Some people have a bit
of a self-introduction that’ll say things like, “I’m learning English, I really
like basketball and movies! Let’s be friends!” or some people say things like “I’m looking
for serious language partners.”
And from here you can right out add them as a language partner, which they’ll have to
approve, or you can message them.
So far I haven’t even had to message anyone because so many people have sent me messages
first.
One thing I was a little worried about was that people might use it as a dating or hook
up app, but at several points throughout learning how to use the app, there have been little
pop up messages that’ll come up and say things like “This is not a dating app. Please
don’t use it like this.” Or “If someone send you inappropriate photos, please report
them.” And things like that. So I was glad to know that they take a proactive approach
in trying to prevent things like that.
So far I haven’t really had any problems like that. But I have had some people who’ve
I’ve been messaging them and they’ll say things like “You’re cute…” and stuff like
that.
I think if you put a picture of your cat as your profile picture or something, then you’re
probably not going to get messages like that. Another option is there’s a setting where
you can say like “I only want to be able to talk to people the same gender as me”
or “I only want to be able to talk to people in the same age range.” So you can kind
of prevent stuff like that, too if you’re worried about it.
And in the worst case scenario, you can block someone.
Obviously, in the end, you’re still talking to strangers through the internet so you should
be a little careful, but so far I’ve been having good experiences with it so I definitely
think it’s worth checking out.
Moving onto the actual purpose of the app, it’s for finding language exchange partners.
There are a lot of options when you talk to someone. You can send pictures, call them
for free, and request language exchanges.
They even link to tutorials in the app for you to show you how you can use the language
exchange function. And I think that language exchange function is REALLY helpful. Because
so far with most of the people I’ve been talking to, we either talk primarily in English,
or we talk primarily in Japanese, and there’s not actually much language exchange going
on. So if you use the language exchange function, then it forces you to speak half of the time
in Japanese, and half of the time in English in my case because those are the two languages
I’m doing.
When you click on someone’s message, there are a lot of options. You can correct their
sentences if they’re writing in your language, or you can translate or transliterate their
text. It’s not perfect but it has been helpful for me when I’ve come across kanji I didn’t
recognize. I transliterated it and usually when I see the spelling of it, then I’m
able to recognize the word. For voice messages, there’s also an option to transcribe those,
too.
When you’re texting someone, you can send a translation with it automatically. Since
the translation isn’t perfect, you can erase the machine translation and then do your best
to translate it yourself. And then the person who reads it can correct it for you. You can
also do group chat as well.
All that stuff is free. You don’t have to pay for any of it. There are limits to some
things like how many times you can use translation button. BUT you can get a pro membership,
and that gets rid of all the limits and gives you a couple other functions as well. Or you
can also pay each month to add in an extra language to your profile. So instead of just
being able to search for and talk to people who speak Japanese, you’re also able to
search for and speak to people who speak Spanish for example.
So far I’ve mostly just been using the app to chat with people, practice my Japanese
and correctly people’s English. I like this app a LOT. And I think it’s really useful
for people like me because all I’m pretty much doing is texting people, so I can do
this when I’m waiting on a train, or in a car, or standing in a line or something.
So for people like me who’re super busy and don’t necessarily have time to sit down
and open a book and study every day, then this is really convenient because all I have
to is just to take out my phone and text someone and I can practice my Japanese.
If you’re a native Japanese speaker and learning English, feel free to send me message
and chat with me! I’m more than happy to be friends with people and do language exchanges
and stuff.
I don’t have a lot of time to respond to people lie every single day so I might not
be able to respond quickly. But I love making new friends and chatting with people. So my
actual ID is @rachel376. So feel free to send me messages. But this only for language exchanges.
If you just want to chat, we can talk on twitter or something like that.
To find this app, the website is HelloTalk.com, or we link it down in the description bar.
Or you can search HelloTalk in Google Play or App Store. I like this app a lot so I hope
you guys find it useful, too. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you later!