Matcha: Anime & Daily Japanese

Know what your oshi actually said. 771 curated Japanese words from anime, streams and social media — explained the way a friend would, not the way a dictionary would.

Anime taught you the feeling. Matcha teaches you the words.

Textbooks give you "I am fine, thank you." Anime, streams and Japanese social media run on a completely different vocabulary — the slang, and the shades of meaning: 推し (oshi), 尊い (toutoi), 沼 (numa), 厨二病 (chuunibyou), お疲れ様 (otsukaresama). No course stops to tell you how those words actually feel.

Matcha is 771 words, chosen one by one, explained the way a friend would. Not a dictionary gloss — the actual feeling, and when it would be weird to say it.

尊い (toutoi) — "precious" is the dictionary answer. What it really is: closer to a prayer. You say it when something is so pure it almost hurts to look at.

That difference is the whole app.

WHAT IS INSIDE

• 771 words across 12 packs — anime and pop culture, internet and social media slang, greetings, feelings, food, travel, shopping, work, making friends, time and weather, emergencies, proverbs. • Nuance notes on the words that need them — the ones where a straight translation would make you say the wrong thing. • Audio on every single word. Works offline. (Three Japanese voices with Premium.) • Kana and romaji on every card, so you can start before you can read. • Words you have not met yet come first. Anything you mark "Not yet" collects in Tricky and keeps coming back until it sticks. • Star a word to keep it somewhere you can find it again. • My Words — heard something in episode 3? Write it down in five seconds and study it alongside everything else. (Premium.)

WHAT IS NOT INSIDE

• No streaks. Miss a week — nothing is taken away, nothing is broken. • No hearts, no lives, no waiting for energy to refill. • No leaderboards, no notifications begging you to come back. • No ads. No behaviour analytics. No trackers. Your learning stays on your device; we never upload it and we cannot see it.

Learning a language should not feel like a slot machine. Matcha is quiet on purpose. You open it, you learn a few words, you close it. Nothing punishes you for stopping.

WHO IT IS FOR

You watch anime with subtitles and keep noticing words the subtitle clearly did not translate. You want to know what your oshi actually said. You tried the big gamified apps and got bored of ordering apples.

You do not need any Japanese to start. Every card carries kana and romaji.

MATCHA PREMIUM

Free: three packs (220 words), one voice, Tricky, and starring words. Enough to know whether this is for you.

Premium unlocks all 12 packs, all three voices, Shuffle All, and My Words. Buy it once and keep it forever, or take the annual plan with a free trial if you would rather try before you commit. The price and the trial length are always shown by the App Store before anything is charged.

No subscription trap: the lifetime option exists so you never have to think about this app's billing again.

MADE BY ONE PERSON, IN JAPAN

Matcha is built by a solo developer in Japan, not a growth team. There is no investor asking for daily-active-user charts, which is why it has no streaks.

The explanations are the reason this app exists, and they are written by a native speaker — because a dictionary will tell you toutoi means "precious" and stop there. It has no opinion about how the word actually lands.

Found a word we got wrong, or want one added? That is the mail we like getting: support.matcha@gmail.com

Refunds and cancellations are handled by the App Store, not by us. Settings → Help inside the app shows you exactly where to go.

SUBSCRIPTION DETAILS

Matcha Premium Annual — a 12-month auto-renewing subscription. Matcha Premium Lifetime — a one-time purchase, not a subscription. Prices are shown in the app before you buy, in your local currency.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/