Japanese
I've tried everything to become fluent in Japanese.
Duolingo. Apps. Textbooks. YouTube rabbit holes at midnight. I've tried them all.
I'd make progress for a week or two, then hit a wall. Textbooks are just plain boring. Duolingo doesn't even teach normal-sounding Japanese. On YouTube there is too much information out there to know what's right.
The words weren't connecting. Grammar was wayyy too confusing (like why the heck are there 50 different verb conjugations). After months, I hadn't made progress. Actually speaking real Japanese felt impossible.
So I stopped studying and started experimenting.
I spent months obsessively testing every method, format, and approach I could find. What if I stopped drilling grammar and just listened? What if I immersed myself in real content instead of textbook sentences? What if learning felt less like homework and more like something I actually wanted to do every day?
Slowly, something started to shift. I could actually understand what they were saying at the コンビニ. I started making real Japanese friends. Conversations I couldn't have imagined having started to feel possible.
18 months after throwing out my textbooks, I stood on stage and won the national Japanese speaking competition.
Learning Japanese changed my life. It has unlocked a new world, experiences, and people. I want to share that feeling with you.
Which is why we're building Kiku. It is the culmination of all the lessons, tips, and tricks I've learnt, so you don't have to spend months figuring it out yourself and can reach fluency faster than you can imagine.