こつこつ日本語 · Kotsukotsu Nihongo
Learn Japanese as a journey up Mt. Fuji. Land at Narita, build real sentences from your very first minute, and end every night with おやすみなさい. Free to start. Launching soon on Android.
Mio is waiting at the trailhead.
The first minute
No alphabet drills first. No matching pairs. You get word blocks, and you build. Your sentence, your first minute, zero prior knowledge. We'll explain the rules later. By then, you'll have already used them.
✓ I'm going to Tokyo.
That's a real sentence. You'll build one just like it before the app asks you for anything.
The story
Sixty-one chapters of graded, real Japanese. You don't study a textbook. You live a story, and the language arrives exactly when the story needs it.
1,500 years of Japan. One mountain. Your journey.
The world
This isn't a menu with a mountain painted behind it. The trail is drawn, animated and scored: three altitude biomes, moving weather, and a sky that keeps your local time.
In your hands
Swipe through. This is the app, not a mood board.
830 m
五合目まで
Chapter 2 · Narita
東京へ ようこそ。
Tōkyō e yōkoso. Welcome to Tokyo.
✓ I'm going to Tokyo.
駅
eki · the station
ek|
おやすみ放送
水を ください。
mizu o kudasai · Water, please.
Your companion
Duolingo gives you vocabulary. Mio gives you Japan. Every lesson is taught in her one real voice. She texts you culture notes between sessions, dresses for the weather on the mountain, and remembers what you promised yourself.
Between lessons
When you booked class and forgot
Incoming call · Mio · 19:00
She calls you to class over your lock screen, like a real alarm. A promise is a promise.
On your home screen
She lives on your phone, not in it
A home widget where her pose follows your day, and a focus mode that locks your loudest apps until you've studied.
She dresses for the mountain
Streaks keep you coming back for a week. A companion keeps you coming back in March.
The flagship · おやすみ放送
When you get into bed, the app goes dark and quiet, and Mio reads back everything you learned today, plus the phrases you'll need tomorrow. English first, then Japanese, then Japanese alone as you drift.
おやすみ放送
水を ください。
mizu o kudasai
Water, please.
Today's 12 words · pass 2 of 3 · English fading
Reviewing right before sleep is when memory does its quiet work. Mio just turns it into a ritual you'll never want to skip: your own day, read back to you in her voice, under a sky full of stars.
The last thing you hear is her saying おやすみなさい.
And when you wake, she's there.
The depth
ドキドキ
The 4,500 words Duolingo will never teach you. Doki doki, pera pera, giri giri: the words Japan actually thinks in.
歴史
The climb doubles as 1,500 years of Japan. Every rest camp tells you where you are, in the country and in its story.
記憶
Modern spaced repetition (FSRS) under the hood, and honest mastery on top. The app never tells you that you know a word you don't.
生きる
The phrases that save you at the station, the pharmacy, the izakaya. Learned before the day you need them.
書く
You type from memory and you speak out loud. Recognition quizzes are a warm-up here, never the goal.
話す
Multi-turn spoken conversations in real voices, with the why behind every line. Order the coffee before you land.
And more
The trail opens soon on Android, and early climbers enter first, with founder pricing. After you sign up you get a personal trail link: bring a friend, and you both move up the waitlist.
Soon. We're in the final stretch of polish. Android first, and the waitlist email is the starting gun: early climbers enter before everyone else.
Free to start. The full N5 route, your first mountain, is free at launch. Higher mountains arrive later as premium, and early climbers get founder pricing.
Android first, iOS after launch. Join the waitlist either way and we'll tell you the moment iOS opens.
No. Your first sentence assumes zero knowledge, and reading help (rōmaji) stays available as long as you want it. If you already know some kana or vocabulary, the trail adapts.
It launches in English and Portuguese (pt-PT). More languages follow. The Japanese, of course, is the point.
It goes into one list, used for one thing: telling you when the trail opens. No sharing, no ad audiences, unsubscribe in one tap, delete on request. Details in the privacy policy.