Japanese LS Touch Reviews

I love JapaneseLSTouch, I have both the Japanese and kanji LS apps but they are completely broken right now on my iPad 2 iOS 5. Drawing won't work in practice or test modes

JapaneseLSTouch works ok if you want to practice your handwriting, but thus far I have experienced some major bugs. First of all, it crashes a lot of the time if you click the solve button, and the multiple choice doesn't work at all. If you try to do multiple choice mode, then it displays the wrong kanji for the reading, and the wrong reading for the kanji. The kanji's it displays has that particular reading (quite literally), however, it's not the right vocabulary word.

Due to this major issue, I cannot use JapaneseLSTouch. It's one of the most expensive too in its category.

I would return it if I could. I was really surprised and disappointed that the entries do not include verbs! I need to study verbs just as badly as I need to study nouns and adjectives so leaving them out is a huge omission. Conjugated forms would not be necessary, but please at least add the dictionary forms. Had I known verbs were not included I definitely would've purchased the cheaper Kanji LS instead... I am still considering purchasing it, but I'm put-off after spending so much on this program.

The best aspect of this program is definitely the writing input that enables you to check your handwriting and stroke count. I will continue to use it for studying vocabulary (which is misspelled as "vocablulary" on the menu, by the way...) and practicing kanji. The user interface is simple but effective. The option to upload your own vocabulary lists is extremely convenient and should be implemented in all the Japanese language programs! Hopefully the creator will update soon so that it is more practical for studying. Until then I cannot recommend purchasing it.

It's priced higher than most other apps but I spend a lot of time studying so I'm willing to spend a little money for a good app. Unfortunately the functionality of kanji and Japanese LS is split between two apps and I don't get that at all. I study kanji when I study vocab and vice versa. I own both apps but they're useless without the other's functionality. I'm a bit annoyed and will use other apps to study instead.

It's always deeply frustrating to spend significant amounts of money on an application that the seller never ever updates. As of now, 1.1 dates back from almost 7 months ago.
Granted, Japanese LS is a fine app. But it still crashes once in a while (I had to delete JapaneseLSTouch and reinstall it this morning: farewell custom sets). And there is much, much room for improvement, such as having hiragana everywhere if desired, changing the depressingly dark interface, more customizing option, better navigation, etc.
I hope the developer hears his customers who spent $15 on his product.

JapaneseLSTouch is great when you use hiragana to find the vocabulary. However, it doesn't always give you what you're looking for if you type in English or German.

Also, it is kind of annoying that JapaneseLSTouch is separate from Kanji LS Touch if you're learning how to write kanji. JapaneseLSTouch is intended to help you study vocabulary and if you look for single kanji that do not occur as their own word, you're out of luck.

JapaneseLSTouch is great. It works well as a study aid and as a dictionary, particularly if there are sample sentences that show you the usage of the word (which is sometimes very distinct from what you'd think of the translation). The only downside is that it's expensive and that certain functions are in separate apps, so that you have to spend even more money.

I find JapaneseLSTouch has some useful features, but it could use improvements in some places.

The font being used for writing doesn't represent real Japanese handwriting. 週 for example, the last 3 strokes are written differently than they appear in this font. さand きare other examples. In handwriting, the last stroke isn't connected to the rest of the character.

I would also like it if the iPad version could allow for the option of a smaller writing area. This would help to enforce the size of the actual characters when writing in real life. I feel the large space on the iPad doesn't help me learn as easily.

Doofus, this does have verbs. I've been playing this application for a couple of hours and it definitely does test both verbs and compound (multiple character) words. Having bought Kanji LS previously and liked it for its direct input of Kanji characters (as Jan Bogner's Japanese Apps are the only full featured Apps I know that provide this), I bought Japanese LS just for its inclusion of example sentences tests. It also includes the advantage of testing multiple character words, wheras Kanji LS tests only single Kanji elements of words. Japanese LS succeeds greatly at this second point.

Unfortunately for the testing of example sentences, you can't easily extract the full meaning of the sentences tested because the phonetic reading is not given for all elements in the sentences (which would aid in looking up unknown words). Other problems for this key testing mode include that the English meaning of sentences disappears after you enter your answer and the number of characters for each answer is not listed clearly (such as would be in the game of hangman, wheras there would be a blank for each syllable. Example: 'kanarazu' would be 'ka na ra zu,' there are four blanks to fill in). On the positive side, the testing of multiple Kanji and compound words in Japanese LS is a big improvement over the single Kanji input limitation of Kanji LS. It would also help if the learning sets were divided into more reasonably sized sets, such as 10 to 30 words at a time, instead of the formidably sized JLPT sets (The smallest of which is JLPT 3 - 664 words).

If this application is polished a bit more, especially given the advantages of its direct input, which no other Japanese learning App does, it could easily become one of the greatest written Japanese learning Apps out there. For spoken Japanese, Japanese Sensei definitely wins out for now, but still, Japanese LS is uniquely instructive for its direct input testing and will definitely be worth its pricetag if these couple of small hiccups are remedied. A strong Application nonetheless.

After running into a few major issues with JapaneseLSTouch (which ended up being the fault of my device ) and emailing the developer I received immediate support. JapaneseLSTouch itself is smooth, simple, and fantastic for learning to write Japanese. JapaneseLSTouch is all about utility and it performs! There is a huge amount of content and many ways to test yourself and learn. The most unique and helpful feature that it offers is the ability to grade your own writing and stroke order in a step by step manner. There is no automatic writing detector to be picky and mark you wrong because the angle was "slightly off". JapaneseLSTouch makes studying and learning Japanese a breeze! It is an absolute must have for any learner! Thank you Jan for bringing this helpful tool to life! I don't have a single regret in purchasing JapaneseLSTouch and it's upgrade!