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!