Speak Japanese from minute one

Comfortable everyday conversation (roughly CEFR B1) usually takes about 900-1100 hours of study, and professional working proficiency about 2200 hours. Those are the orders of magnitude from the US Foreign Service Institute tables, measured for English-speaking learners, so treat them as a reference point rather than a promise. What moves the number is how many of those hours you spend actually speaking: 10 minutes of conversation a day gets you further than an hour of passive review once a week.

No. Japanese uses three writing systems (hiragana, katakana and kanji) and the script is its own long track. Speaking does not have to wait for it: the conversation is voice, and transcripts let you absorb characters gradually.

Yes. The conversation is spoken, so characters don't block your start. Transcripts and vocabulary will help you tame the writing gradually, but speaking starts from lesson one.

Restaurant, train station, hotel, asking for directions and basic politeness. The tutor rehearses those scenarios with you out loud, so you'll use them on the spot without panic.

The tutors stay in one variety throughout: standard Tokyo Japanese, polite desu/masu forms. Every language has a female and a male voice, so you hear two different timbres and two speaking speeds rather than one recording on repeat.

That is the whole point of the app. The AI tutor picks up at any hour, with nothing to schedule and nobody to find, and a session can run 5 minutes or half an hour. It does not judge, does not sigh, and you can ask it to repeat something ten times in a row. After the conversation you get an analysis: what went well, where the mistakes were, and which words you were missing.

For daily speaking practice AI is enough, and it has one advantage over a person: it is available in the 10 free minutes you actually have. We do not pretend it replaces a teacher, though. A human reads your goal better, runs a longer programme, prepares you for an exam and catches cultural nuance. The healthiest setup is AI every day plus a human every so often, if you can have both.

Any level from zero to C2. At A1 the tutor speaks slowly in short, simple sentences, helps when you get stuck, and gradually builds up your answers. You can change your level anytime or follow the AI's recommendation after lessons.

You start free: 10 minutes of conversation over 7 days, no card required. Then the 90-minute plan at $24 (€20) a month, or the 250-minute plan at $48 (€40), up to 3 languages.