Lost in Japan App Reviews

It closes when I try to take a photo

I had no success getting it to properly read and translate kanji in pictures I took. I may try another app, as this one was pretty disappointing.

Just downloaded the program, despite the warnings, and it wouldnt open the camera.

A promising app, but it is pretty basic at the moment. Fairly good at picking out large kanji, but ordinary print text is a bit too small. However, you can write the character with a marker and it seems to do a fairly good job of recognizing it then. My main suggestions are: 1. It needs to give the on/kun reading of the kanji so you can look it up in a full dictionary and find the word. As Im sure most people reading this know, Japanese words are rarely made out of single characters and right now this program gives the most basic English but nothing else. 2. It would be great if you could copy and paste the kanji (one recognized) into another program. That way you could search for them in google or another full dictionary. Still the app shows promise and in a few revisions itll actually be useful.

This app hardly recognizes any of the kanji that I have taken a picture of. It doesnt even recognize it when the picture is perfect. I gave up on this app. Delete - Trash

If you use this app you will not only still be lost, but also frustrated. Kanji shows up choppy and never could get to read.

Dont bother with this one. The OCR is horrendous. Its not even close.

lol a couple of weeks ago I literally spent two hours looking for one kanji symbol until (I was at the library) the library closed and I had to go home and realized I had to do my homework D: and so for the next few weeks I kept searching for the appearingly non-existent symbol, then I found this app. I must admit, it took me a couple of tries; I tried taking a picture of it directly from the computer screen (it was in a video, so I couldnt copy and paste), then I wrote it in red pen, which didnt work, then I tried black pen and it worked perfectly on the first try :D !!! This app is much easier than scrolling through thousands of kanji! I just wish there was a way of archiving what youve done, but eh, I could always just take another picture :)

The image clearly shows the kanji, but the suggestions are way, way off (not even remotely similar characters). If theres some trick to this, I cant figure it out...

I couldnt get it to read the kanji I was trying to translate, and my battery life dropped way down after this was installed, I dont know if this program was to blame, but I know I wasnt using my phone anymore than usual.

The main problem with this app seems to be: the size of real text in real life versus the size the app requires a single kanji to be for OCR recognition. My iPhone will not allow me to zoom in to the extent that is required to fill the screen with a single kanji. On the one occasion I was able to find kanji big enough (a title, made up of two kanji), I purposefully put the first kanji to the side of the screen so the second kanjis strokes would not interfere with the OCR. On this occasion, the OCR worked and it read the kanji properly. However, to be fair, it was a fairly common kanji. Then I repeated the process for the second kanji in the title and it did not work. Attempts to process non-isolated kanji did not result in anything resembling the correct kanji. Too bad. I wanted it to work.

This app would be wonderful with improvements, but as is, it can only read black text, and the kanji that you take a picture of can only be read if it is of a certain size.

This app does work, but under limited conditions. It works best with: one kanji at a time, large characters, sufficient contrast, and calligraphy that isnt overly stylistic.

Doesnt work. Dont ask me questions. Im the one that needs the translation! Why would the app asks you which to choose?!

Doesnt work. I really hope they havent charged me. Take it off the internet!!

I actually kind of feel bad for it. Hasnt even been optimized for the iPhone 5 yet, and doesnt work at all. (Not an exaggeration, this app isnt usable since the camera and all other features dont work.)