According to a recent article in The New York Times, you no longer need to learn Japanese to connect with locals in Tokyo.
Invest 2,000 hours to achieve fluency? Forget that — all you need is a pair of trusty AirPods and Apple’s new live translation feature. A tap of a screen and the iPhone will record and produce an automatically translated manuscript of your conversation, handy dandy for a night out on Golden Gai.
It’s a feature that makes my heart sink. But not because I am one of those foolish individuals who did pour 2,000 hours into mastering Japanese, and I regret the wasted time.
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