JapaneseQuest
JapaneseQuest
Nine tracks. One placement test. Start where you actually are.
Moving to Tokyo, sitting N4, closing deals in keigo, or following an episode without subtitles — those are different courses, not one. Answer a few questions and you get the right track, starting at your real level.
Living in Japan, travel, work, media, or JLPT N5–N1 — different words, different order.
Goal, level, time per day, deadline. This picks your track — which words you get and in what order — plus the pace you'll be held to.
Two minutes, up to seven bands, and it adapts to your track. Read both kana already? You'll skip 24 lessons. Total beginner? You start at あ.
Reviews resurface each card the moment before you'd forget it. Ten minutes daily beats two hours on a Sunday — that's the whole trick.
Self-reported level is useless — "a little Japanese" means anything from three characters to a hundred words. So we measure it. Score a band and its lessons unlock as already cleared.
Placing out never awards XP or rank. It unlocks content; it can't buy you a leaderboard position.
The test cleared 24 lessons you already know. You'll begin at Greetings 1.
Say the phrase out loud. Your browser transcribes it and scores how close you landed. It measures whether a machine understood you — which is exactly the bar that matters when a shop assistant is waiting.
Scored in hiragana, so the recogniser returning kanji for the same sounds never penalises you.
Pick any rows and hammer them. Characters you miss come back far more often; ones you've nailed fade out. Wrong answers are drawn from look-alikes, so you have to actually tell め from ぬ instead of spotting the odd one out.
Confuse a known pair and it explains the difference on the spot.
Add friends by username, then compare weekly XP. It resets every Monday, so nobody is ever permanently out of it — and joining late doesn't put you behind by a year.
Only lessons you genuinely sat are counted. Placement doesn't inflate anyone's numbers.
An SM-2 scheduler resurfaces each card exactly when you're about to forget it — and refuses to inflate intervals just because you drilled it twice in a minute.
出口, 非常口, 準備中, 税抜, 半額 — recognition-only kanji from real doors, menus and price tags. You never have to write them.
Every word and sentence is spoken aloud, and listening questions show no text at all — because signage won't be there when someone talks to you.
Streak freezes cover the days life gets in the way, so one bad week doesn't undo two good months.
Your dashboard shows days remaining and the lessons-per-day needed to finish in time. It will tell you when you're behind.
Progress syncs to your account, but lessons keep running with no signal and push up when you're back.
Each track has its own vocabulary, its own units and its own order. Shared foundations — kana, core grammar — carry across, so switching later costs you nothing.
Shops, trains, doctors, paperwork
The konbini register script, ward-office vocabulary, signage kanji and the phrases that unstick you. 85 lessons.
Two weeks, no stress
Hotels and check-in, sightseeing, tax-free shopping, ordering. 77 lessons.
Office, email, keigo
Meetings, hierarchy, 報連相, and the honorific register that decides whether you sound employable. 79 lessons.
Full syllabus, sequenced for the exam
Vocabulary, kanji and grammar in exam order. N5 is 117 lessons; N4 builds on it for 138. N3–N1 unlock from there.
Casual speech and set phrases
Plain form, contractions, sentence-enders and the expressions that dominate spoken dialogue. 83 lessons.
Full OpenJLPT vocab & kanji sets
N3, N2 and N1 are live as separate tracks — each builds through the levels below it. Vocabulary and kanji first; higher grammar units come later.
Kana and first words
or $71.99/year · unlimited study
or $119.99/year · everything
14-day Max trial, no card. Checkout isn’t live yet — you won’t be charged.
Yes, and it costs you nothing. Lessons are shared between tracks and keep the same identity, so every star and every review card carries straight over — 41 lessons overlap between the survival and N5 tracks alone.
Yes. Each is its own track with the OpenJLPT vocabulary and kanji sets, sequenced on top of the levels below it. Lesson ids are shared, so progress from N4 or N3 carries straight over when you switch up. Higher-level grammar syllabi are still being added as separate units.
No. The placement test measures up to seven bands (including N3 on N3+ tracks) and unlocks whatever you've already got. Reading both kana skips roughly 24 lessons; demonstrating N4 vocabulary clears the N5 blocks too.
Only for speaking practice, and only if you want it. Note that speech recognition sends audio to a cloud service in Chrome and Edge — it isn't processed on your device, and it needs internet.
Lessons and reviews do. Progress is cached locally and pushed to your account when you're back online. Speaking practice needs a connection.
Yes as a web app today — install JapaneseQuest from your browser (Add to Home Screen / Install). Native App Store and Google Play builds are coming soon.
Install from your browser today. Native apps are on the way.
Coming soon
Coming soon
On your phone: open japanese-quest.com → browser menu → Add to Home Screen or Install app.
Ten minutes a day is the difference between pointing at menus and having a conversation. Two minutes from now you'll know exactly which lesson is yours.
Start free — no cardTakes about two minutes to get placed and into your first lesson.