Katakana Rocks! Learn Japanese

YOU'RE ON TOUR IN JAPAN. NOBODY IN THE BAND SPEAKS JAPANESE. Makiko, your guide, takes it from there — one level at a time. Somewhere around minute ten, you notice you're reading. KATAKANA FIRST Japanese uses three scripts. Katakana is the one kept for foreign words: コーヒー is coffee, ホテル is hotel, タクシー is taxi, ビール is beer. You have just read four Japanese words. That is the whole idea. Learn these 46 signs first and a large part of what a visitor actually meets — menus, station signs, convenience store shelves — opens up within a couple of weeks, instead of a month of drilling before anything clicks. Hiragana come next, then a set of kanji chosen for being genuinely useful. A STORY, NOT A COURSE 36 levels, told as a journey: the all-night konbini, the sunrise onsen, the karaoke night, the train that gets you to the venue. Makiko explains, teases and corrects. There is an ending, and there are credits. FIVE WAYS TO PLAY Quiz — short sessions on a handful of characters or words, at your own pace. Rhythm — read kana in time with the music, on a soundtrack written for the game. Battle — a duel that makes you recall under pressure. Stickers — a collection to unlock, some pieces much rarer than others. Street levels — real Japanese signage, read the way you will actually meet it. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO No subscription. No ads. No in-app purchases. No account to create. No streak guilt-tripping you at 9pm. One purchase, and the game is yours. IT WORKS ON A PLANE Every lesson, voice and music track is inside the app. Nothing needs a connection — not in flight, not on the subway, not in a hotel room with no Wi-Fi. And nothing you do leaves your device: there is no server to send it to. ENGLISH AND FRENCH Both, fully — story, voices, vocabulary. MADE BY ONE PERSON Written, designed and built solo in Bordeaux, France, with music composed for the game and a story written for it, tested at every iteration by a small circle of French and Japanese friends. Play the first five levels free, in your browser, before you buy anything: katakana.rocks