Nikkanji

Nikkanji is a daily Japanese practice app for adults living in Japan, from first kana to real conversations. As co-founder and CTO of Gohesive I built it, from the course to the iOS, Android and web apps.

Role

Co-founder and CTO

Scope

Course and review engine

Speaking practice

Japanese dictionary

iOS, Android and web apps

Stack

React

Cloudflare Workers

Capacitor

Years

2026 to now

nikkanji.com App Store Google Play

/* What it is */

Nikkanji is for adults who live with Japanese: at the dinner table, in the izakaya and at the city office. Every morning it lays out a short set of reviews and a few new items, sized to the time you have, and then sends you out to use them.

/* What I built */

The whole product: a course of 184 lessons from kana to N3, a spaced repetition engine, practice by ear, by tile and out loud, and the iOS, Android and web apps from one codebase.

Three Nikkanji App Store screenshots: a day marked complete with the 字 seal, the kana course path, and a conversation practice scene

Four Nikkanji App Store screenshots: tapping word tiles into order, finding a missing particle, naming a bento in a picture game, and a flashcard

Feature highlights

Feature 1

/* Course and reviews */

184 lessons in 24 units run from kana through N5, N4 and N3, covering 386 grammar points with voiced examples and a dialogue in every grammar lesson. Reviews use the FSRS scheduler with only two answers, Again and Good.

Three phones on a sumi brush stroke, the centre one showing the Nikkanji course path with the current lesson lifted out

Feature 2

/* Speaking practice */

44 Talk scenes run from family dinners to admin at the city office. You hold to speak, a conversation partner answers in character, and each turn is marked on being understood, register, naturalness, grammar and fluency. Missions then send you on real errands, with set phrases, the replies you are likely to hear and a fallback.

Three phones on a sumi brush stroke, the centre one showing a Nikkanji conversation scene with the Japanese line and its English lifted out

Feature 3

/* Capture and look up */

Snap a sign or paste a message and the words you have not met can join your own reviews with one tap. Look up searches the full JMdict and KANJIDIC2 dictionaries in any written or conjugated form, and works conjugations back to the dictionary form on the device.

Two Nikkanji App Store screenshots: a kanji with its strokes and components, and a photo of a menu turned into words to learn

/* Outcome */

Live on the web at nikkanji.com, on the App Store and on Google Play.