Skip to content
nihongo

about

What is nihongo?

A calm, local-first companion for learning just enough Japanese to travel well — and understand the place you're visiting.

The idea

Most language apps optimise for streaks and badges. nihongo optimises for one trip: read the signs, order the food, ride the trains, be polite, and enjoy it. Everything here is ranked by how much it actually helps a first-timer in Japan.

Three ways to use it

  • Drill & Scenes — spaced-repetition flashcards plus short branching dialogues. Five to ten focused minutes a day.
  • Cheatsheets — tap-to-hear kana, numbers, counters, time, a signage decoder, a menu reader and a situational phrasebook. Reference you reach for in the moment.
  • Culture & etiquette — the unwritten rules: trains, onsen, temples, dining, money, and a Ghibli Museum survival pack.

How the drilling works

Cards are scheduled with SM-2, the spaced-repetition algorithm behind classic Anki. You rate how well you recalled a card (0–5); easy cards drift further into the future, hard ones come back soon. New and trip-critical cards surface first. It's simple, transparent, and enough for a tourist's vocabulary.

Audio

Tap the speaker on any Japanese to hear it, using your browser's built-in Japanese voice () — no accounts, no API keys, no cost. Quality varies by device; install a Japanese system voice for the best results.

Works offline

nihongo installs as a small web app and caches pages you've visited, so your cheatsheets and culture guides are there on the plane or in a basement izakaya with no signal. Add it to your home screen and it opens full-screen.

Privacy

No accounts. No analytics. Your review history lives in a local database on your own machine. The only optional outbound traffic is a daily push reminder (it contains a due-card count and a link — never card content).

Content & accuracy

Kana and numerals follow the standard tables; survival phrases are triangulated against open phrasebooks; the cheatsheets and culture guides were drafted and then checked phrase-by-phrase for natural, current Japanese. It's built for a beginner, so it favours high-frequency, canonical phrasing over clever grammar. If something reads oddly, trust a native speaker over the app.