Purpose
This project is designed to help a beginner start gently with hiragana, katakana, and JLPT N5 basics before moving into harder material. The current app favors short practice loops, review, and daily continuity over long lessons.
A static, local-first prototype I am building to rebuild my Japanese from the beginning and prepare for real life in Japan.
Hi, I'm the creator. I lived near Yokota Air Base from 1995 to 2001, and later near Kadena AB in Okinawa from 2007 to 2010 (where my son was born).
Over the years, I've spent plenty of money on Japanese books and apps to try and rebuild my language skills, but I always drifted away. The practice just never felt personal or practical enough to stick with. So, I decided to build the study path I actually wanted to use.
Because some of my own experience in Japan is older, my Japanese wife, Emi, who visits Japan yearly, provides the modern perspective. Together, we want this site to combine beginner language study with practical, real-world notes about things like transit, etiquette, and daily costs.
This project is designed to help a beginner start gently with hiragana, katakana, and JLPT N5 basics before moving into harder material. The current app favors short practice loops, review, and daily continuity over long lessons.
The current scope is kana-first N5 starter practice: recognition, vocabulary, particles, grammar patterns, sentence checks, and practical phrases. It is not a complete JLPT preparation product.
Japanese explanations and examples should be treated as learning aids that need review. The project does not guarantee language accuracy, naturalness, or official JLPT alignment.
Start with the first practical blog note: Cash, Cards, and Suica in Japan.