[abecode]

I went to a conference in Japan two weeks ago and before I travelled I got a Lonely Planet phrasebook from a used book store.

I did end up using Google Translate on my smartphone more, but having a physical book that obviously marks you as someone learning the language is a useful and underrated benefit. I had 2-3 conversations ('interactions' is probably a better word for me actually using the Japanese) over the course of a week that I can attribute to the phrasebook, which is somewhat significant because at the conference English was the default.

Also if the phrasebook is well organized, it can be a good scaffold for keeping the language organized in memory, so it can be a kind of a bridge between a simple translation lookup and a textbook. It's also like a fanny pack that has some retro appeal. Although the phrasebook had a dictionary at the back, it wasn't that useful. Having a proper dedicated pocket dictionary was good because it had words listed with phrase collocations/examples.