Jalup Line Group
You’ve probably heard the deal about the popular app “Line” in Japan. It’s Japan’s go-to messaging/social app, which I believe is still at the top of its game. I’ve used it for a few years now, and it’s pretty damn great. But I’m not here to praise the Line app again. I’m here to try a suggestion recently made in the comment sections of a post.
“How about creating a Line group so members of Jalup can help each other out and practice and communicate with each other in Japanese?”
A Line Group is a powered up chat room. Invited members can text, upload pictures, videos, voice memos, have phone (video/audio) conversations, create notes, like/share those notes, etc. It’s also a good way to expand Japanese learner friendships, as you can start talking with people inside and outside the group easily. At any time that you want to practice actual speaking, texting can be expanded to a phone chat. The new line group call function apparently supports up to 200 people speaking simultaneously. We could probably break some kind of Japanese learner Guinness world record with that.
I’m not really sure how well using a Line Group will turn out, but I think it was an excellent suggestion, and worth a try to see what happens. Since the Jalup forum fizzled here, this could be a possible replacement.
The same rules that apply to the comments section here on Jalup here apply to the Line group:
● Help each other out to succeed: share tactics and strategies, advice and experience.
● You are encouraged to comment in Japanese whenever you want.
● Be friendly. Disagreeing is fine, but do so politely. Personal attacks/nasty comments will have you banished from the group.
Moderation is hard, because it isn’t as simple as a forum, and it will be hard to keep track of multiple conversations over time. But if there is an abusive member, the best thing to do is e-mail me directly, and I’ll remove them from the group.
I want to make the process to join very simple, so I’m going to go the QR code route, which makes anyone able to enter with a few easy steps. If things get out of hand (which I hope they won’t), I may have to ask people to request access by e-mail, and then I’ll directly add them. We’ll see how it goes.
Please leave any suggestions you have
How this group will progress, the dynamic of it, what is done with it, and it’s success will all be based on you guys that join. I see possibilities such as scheduled weekly chats, weekly group phone calls, even watching native media together and having discussions, but let’s first start at the beginning. I will try to participate sometimes when I can (I warn you in advance, I’m a bit of a stamp fiend), but it’ll be up to you guys to really make this work. So… よろしくお願いします！
Here’s how to join:
In order to be able to moderate better and prevent trolling, this is an invite-only group. You must provide any two of the following four.
- Self-introduction (who you are, why you’re studying, etc.) and the Line name you plan on using.
- Provide some links to some of the posts (old and new) you have commented on.
- Provide a receipt to any Jalup purchase you’ve made.
- Have a friend already in the Line Group vouch for you.
Then you’ll get an e-mail invite. And you’re in! Welcome!
Notifications
Once you are in the group chat room, you need to change the following settings to avoid being blasted with thousands of notifications:
1. Click on the down arrow button on the top right of the screen and click the 通知OFF (Notifications OFF) button.
2. In your phone’s general notifications section, turn off the icon badge. You can completely turn off notifications if you want, but if you use Line to talk with other people in real time this will get in the way of that.
Let’s get Jalupining (Jalup Lining)…
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
Oh my god! Instant messaging with Japanese experts? Hit me up! I’ll be on there 24/7. I think slack (https://slack.com/) is a better platform for this kind of group messaging, but I don’t mind this format either.
Loving it!
I’m in. It will probably take me a bit to warm up to it though. <3
I’m really glad that this is being tried out! Enjoying it so far. (･∀･)
What a great idea~ the chat is really fun haha
This was an awesome idea :D I just had my first Japanese chat… You guys rock! The chat format also forces speed. If just a couple of people are chatting you have to keep up the speed with both reading and writing to stay in the conversation.
Something I just learned, it’s far more efficient to type with the QWERTY keyboard setup in android than the other way (where you have to swipe to pick the hiragana character you want). (I saw Adam and others talking about this last night lol).
The swipe keyboard is actually faster in the long run, I’ve seen Japanese use it like lightning. But it would take ages to get used to it
Ah yeah. I guess what I meant was it is more efficient for me since I’m familiar with the QWERTY keyboard but not the swipe method which would take me quite a while to learn :) And I also wanted to say something here in case any other beginners like me have trouble keeping up with everyone’s super fast typing :)
It’s sort of like learning Japanese itself. If you want to be able to keep pace with everyone you need to learn 10-key and get used to it. The up front cost sucks, somewhat like learning kanji RTK-style, but eventually you can get super fast especially if you switch to dual thumbs which is a huge speed increase over QWERTY.
Hmm okay, I’m gonna have to look into it eventually then.
Not enough memory on my phone :(
I think you might be able to use it on a PC (but I haven’t tried this). The download page has links for mobile and desktop/tablet versions.
It’s ok. I had to uninstall my soul, but I finally got it to fit.
You must have an iPhone if it required giving up your soul …
This line chat was a great idea but in reality its just people talking about japanese in english all day
From what I’ve seen it’s been mostly in Japanese so far. There are definitely forays into English (when the topic becomes too complex, or lower-level folks want to participate), though. Maybe you jumped in during one such time?
日本語で話したらどう？ それしないなら文句言うな。
落ち着けよ！：） 思想自由。 彼（女）は本当のこと言っています。He probably entered the conversation at a bad time.
無礼ならごめん。わざとらしいですけどわざとじゃないの。兎に角確実な根拠だな。
じゃあ、仲直り。
I don’t think that’s a fair representation of the chat. I’ve seen about the same amount of Japanese conversations as I have English. I don’t think it would be realistic to force Japanese only conversation as it would exclude any participation from beginners. I also think beginners have a right to ask for tips and advice from advanced learners. It has opened my eyes and energized my studies and I’ve seen the same from other beginners. You should try to start a conversation in Japanese and see what happens :)
It may be a little difficult to start a conversation in Japanese in the middle of an on-going English conversation. A lot of messages is thrown back and forth very quickly sometimes. But I don’t think we can solve that really..
The best advice is probably to ignore the English chat if not interested in the topic, and then trying to start a Japanese conversation when the chat goes quiet. The Japanese conversations I’ve had in the chat so far have been fun and great practice.
My experience is that it is randomly all Japanese, then randomly all English, then it gets all mixed and then suddenly its a stamp fest, etc.
Overall it’s better than I expected and since I know plenty of places to get raw unfiltered high-level Japanese its actually nice to see a huge mix of skill level and randomness. If you do want the conversation to turn Japanese just bring up a decent topic. Most people try to respond in the same language if they can but other times speed and clarity of communication trump that and that is definitely a good thing!
I am realy sorry you felt that way about the chat. I realy think, like others already said, you realy just came at a bad timing. As far as I can tell the Chat is at least regulary just in japanese for a while.
The people are pretty nice there as well and I dont think anyone would have a problem to get back to japanese if the conversion turned to english. (even though not everyone will be able to like beginers and the shouldnt feel excluded) Of course the chat won’t be able to please everyone, there are a lot of people with different levels after all, and i think its important to be a welcoming place for everyone.
Another thing to consider is the chat just started so not everything will be perfect. For me its definitly a fun place already and I think everyone in the chat is open for suggestions to make it a better place for japanese learners.
Everything got deleted?????
The ID-EN Translator just came in and wiped everything out!
Yeah! Same here! is that person just an asshole, or is it Adam doing something. If it is the former, I guess we are doing the invite system
It definitely wasn’t anything Adam did. It looks like someone messed with the group, unfortunately. Adam and some other folks are working on figuring out what to do next.
I honestly don’t know what happened, but the ID-EN Translator is an official service. I personally think it was a bug in their system. Whether that was triggered intentionally or not is hard to say. I’ve reported it to them just in case.
It was troll time. See new invite requirements.
All good guys. One of them’s salty he can’t make any money out of his fluency. Throws his bitterness towards Adam and learners. Move along.
I had to leave the chat as the messages were just overwhelming even without the push notifications. I use Line actively with my friends so it was distracting to have the Line message bubble. But it was nice seeing everyone’s excitement and to finally get to meet the other members on this site. Good luck everyone.
I really need to find my phone. Its lost in my house and I don’t understand how it happened or where it is.
Life is full of mysteries…
How do you find Japanese people who share similar interests as you? Mixi’s dead, Facebook groups aren’t a big deal, Twitter’s an awful platform to hold a conversation in, and Line groups are private.
I’ve actually had a good experience with Twitter. The character limit is 140 regardless of language, and in Japanese you can fit ~3-4x as much information as you could in that same number of characters in English.
I’ve been so bogged down studying for my JLPT exam tomorrow, I hadn’t even seen that we now have a Line group. Please invite me!
userid: casreadman
As for a reference: http://japaneselevelup.com/stories-of-second-attempt-japanese-learners-6/
I was the one who submitted that post and I commented a lot on it too. Please add me! ^^
Good luck on your JLPT! 頑張ってね〜
I’m a young Japanese learner who has struggled a lot. I think, with the help of this website, I’m finally on track to achieve fluency. I’m studying to hopefully work for Google in their Japan HQ and play all the good Japanese games.
I commented on http://japaneselevelup.com/future-jalup-part-4/ and a couple of other articles. Usually I sit in the background so I don’t say much. I’m hoping this group can give me the constant motivation I need to reach my goals. Also, I’m friends with Jonathon so he might vouch for me if I’m lucky :).
Haha, yes Chris, of course I’ll invite you. We’ve talked multiple times in the past through e-mail as well.