Does it work offline?
All learning data ships inside the app, so the studying itself works with no connection. There are two exceptions: paying for the in-app purchase, and picking a network voice (the higher-quality online voices) for read-aloud — in that case the text being read is sent to your OS speech service. Pick an on-device voice and read-aloud works offline too.
Is this a subscription?
No. It is a one-time purchase. Nothing is charged after that. Please check your store for the price.
How far does it take me?
Vocabulary, grammar, kanji and reading are built around JLPT N5 to N2 — 3,213 words and 1,230 kanji, with the grammar and reading material sitting in the same range. There is no N1 material. The JLPT has not published an official kanji list for each level since 2010, so we do not claim one: a character's level here is the level of the easiest word in the app that uses it, which keeps the labels consistent with the vocabulary you actually study.
Can I start if I cannot read Japanese script yet?
Yes. There is a kana track that teaches hiragana and katakana from zero — including tracing each character with your finger — and a beginner story arc, Japanese Class — Basics (N5), of 20 episodes that is free in full. Japanese text comes with furigana and romaji you can switch on, and every line has an English translation, so you are never stuck on a character you have not met yet.
Are the readings and the romaji accurate?
They are checked by machine, not by eye. Every kanji in the material must carry a reading, and scripts that run on each build verify that the furigana matches the word, that no kanji is left without one, and that a reading never silently changes when we edit a line. Kanji stroke counts are cross-checked against Unicode's Unihan data. Where an old text was written in a mix of kanji and kana that a machine cannot verify, it is reviewed by hand and marked as such.
The read-aloud sounds robotic, or the wrong gender
Both are down to which Japanese voices your device has installed. iOS ships a compact Japanese voice and can download a high-quality one for free, which makes a large difference; if your device has no male Japanese voice, male characters get read with a female one until you add it. The voice setup guide walks through it in about three minutes. Apple does not let apps use the Siri voices, so when two characters of the same gender appear in one scene, the app shifts the second speaker's pitch to keep them apart.
Can I choose a same-sex couple?
Yes. Your gender and your partner's are set independently, so same-sex couples are supported. How you are addressed, the sentence endings, the voices and the faces all follow your settings, and there are episodes written specifically for same-sex couples.
Are there ads?
None at all. There is no analytics SDK either, and no learning data is sent to any external server.
When does it launch?
We are preparing for store review now. As soon as the date is set we will announce it on this page.
