I love collecting Japanese anime merch. I'm also a tech creator and an educator who loves using technology to make my life easier. On a recent trip to Tokyo, I decided to use AI features on my phone to help me navigate the city.
I've visited Japan six times in recent years, and as an avid fan and consumer of Japanese anime and pop culture, I fully intend to visit many more times for general tourism, pop-up events, specialty museums and parks. But my earliest visits to Tokyo were overwhelming and confusing. I had a basic understanding of the language, but this was a time before AI and Street View in Google Maps. I carried a Japanese dictionary with me, downloaded offline walking directions and read tutorials online about how to buy a train ticket. It was… OK.
With the recent popularity of AI, I am allowing myself to visit countries with a little less pre-planning and a little more serendipity. Instead of planning my itinerary based on previous trips, I can use my phone as a personal assistant to help me discover new and less-touristy spots along the way, opening up an opportunity to experience my favorite city again for the first time and keep my trips refreshing and new. And since I'm a collector, AI has also given me the ability to learn about vintage goods I find in overseas stores without wasting time or cash.
Here are three handy AI features that I recently tested in a real-world scenario.
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Circle to Search
One of my favorite things to do in Tokyo is wander around all the small vintage toy shops. It's kind of like a treasure hunt, and whenever I find something I don't have in my collection, I get excited. The problem is that there are thousands of anime products, I don't have them all memorized, and there's a language barrier.
This happened to me in Akihabara, one of Tokyo's electronics and anime centers. I found this box that featured a character I recognized, but I didn't know what the product was. So, I opened the camera app on my Samsung Galaxy and held down on the bottom line to open Circle to Search.
The author drew a circle around the product to initiate an image search. Shannon Morse
Circle to Search is an AI-powered tool built by Google that uses the image on your screen to find matching results. In my case, I circled a Sailor Moon R box. Google then searched for a match. The results showed me several images of the character, which would have been helpful if I didn't already know who she was.
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