Maia

Learn Japanese.

日本語

Learn Japanese with a course that handles hiragana, katakana, and kanji progression alongside grammar -- not a script course and a grammar course awkwardly stitched together.

Start your Japanese course

Why Japanese

Japanese is spoken by 125 million people, and interest in learning it continues to grow driven by anime, manga, gaming, business, and travel. It's one of the most popular languages for English speakers to study.

Japanese has a reputation for being difficult, and it is -- but for specific, identifiable reasons. Three writing systems, an elaborate politeness system, and grammar that works nothing like English. Maia addresses each of these systematically.

What makes Japanese challenging — and how Maia helps

Three writing systems

Japanese uses hiragana, katakana, and kanji together. Maia introduces hiragana first, adds katakana, and layers in kanji gradually with readings and mnemonics -- all integrated into real lessons, not isolated drills.

Politeness levels

Japanese has multiple speech registers encoding social relationships. Using casual forms in a formal situation (or vice versa) is a real social error. Maia teaches polite (desu/masu) forms first, then introduces casual speech.

Particles and sentence structure

Japanese is verb-final, and particles (wa, ga, wo, ni) mark the role of each word in a sentence. Maia builds particle intuition through extensive conversational practice.

What your course includes

  • •Lessons integrating script learning with grammar and conversation
  • •AI podcast episodes mixing Japanese and English
  • •Hiragana, katakana, kanji, vocabulary, and grammar exercises
  • •Spaced repetition for characters and vocabulary
  • •Adaptive curriculum based on your progress

Sample lesson topics

  1. 1.Hiragana: reading and writing your first Japanese
  2. 2.Greetings and self-introduction: hajimemashite
  3. 3.Katakana and loanwords: reading menus and signs
  4. 4.Particles wa, ga, and wo: marking roles in a sentence
  5. 5.Verb conjugation: present, past, and te-form
  6. 6.Your first kanji: numbers, days, and common characters
Start learning Japanese

Free to start. No credit card required.