Wagotabi: A Journey Through Japanese

I first learned about Wagotabi during winter break. It was mentioned by someone on Bluesky (I forget whom at this point, but possibly Casey Explosion or one of her friends). I've been wanting to learn Japanese for a very long time, so I decided to try it out. I bought the Steam version, but Wagotabi is also available on Apple's App Store and Google Play. The Steam version is $9.99. The Google Play version is $4.99. I haven't viewed the price for the Apple version, but presumably it's also $4.99. Because I used a PC to play, I'm using the word "click" instead of "tap" in this review. (Also, all of these images and GIFs are from the official Wagotabi website unless otherwise specified.)

The title, Wagotabi, comes from an archaic word for the Japanese language, plus the word for "to travel/journey." Your character travels through Japan, learning not only the language, but lots of Japanese culture and interesting places. Every location is based on somewhere in actual Japan, so that if you travel to Japan in real life, you'll see some of the same locations you discovered in the game!

Japanese is infamously a difficult language to learn, because in addition to the vocabulary and sentence structure, you also have to learn three different writing systems: hiragana and katakana, which are syllabaries, and kanji, which is a pictographic system. Most Japanese-learning games I've tried have you learn all the hiragana and/or katakana first, before proceeding into vocabulary. This is a mistake that Wagotabi doesn't make. You learn each symbol as you use it, so that you're not overwhelmed with massive amounts of new characters to learn all at once.

The graphics and gameplay are reminiscent of early Pokemon games, without being lifted straight from those games. And of course, instead of Pokemon battles, you're being quizzed on Japanese grammar and vocabulary. Different people teach you new words and phrases, and to become a Japanese master, you'll need to practice them in a variety of ways. Each castle functions like a Pokemon Gym: you solve language-related puzzles to reach the Japanese master who quizzes you on that chapter's grammar and vocabulary.

But that's just the main game. There are references and mini-games when you click the book in the upper-right corner of your screen, and these are where Wagotabi really shines. (My menus in this screenshot are in Japanese text because I've progressed far enough into the game to be able to read them. When you first start the game, all the menus are in your native language.)

KanjiDex, as the name implies, is a list of all the different kanji characters you've learned so far. It also has stroke order, so you can learn to write them correctly too.

Kana is a list of all the hiragana and katakana characters. The syllables you haven't used yet in the game are grayed-out, so you can focus on the ones you've encountered before. Once again, you can click on each character to see the stroke order.

Lessons are copies of the lessons you've learned thus far, so you can brush up on something after spending time away from the game. Always helpful!

There are mini-quizzes you can take, plus rapid-fire kanji and kana identification minigames that will help you learn to read more quickly. All in all, the game includes everything you could need in order to learn Japanese up to a certain level, and the devs are working on including more prefectures of Japan and all N5 content. Because there are only 4 developers working on Wagotabi, this may take a while.

Stats and leaderboards are accessed by clicking on the picture in the upper-left corner. This is also where you can access game settings like your native language, changing your character's appearance, loading/saving a cloud save, and more.

There are online leaderboards (if you care about that sort of thing) and cloud saves, so you can sync your progress over multiple devices. Unlike a lot of games with online components, Wagotabi allows you to play completely offline and ONLY connects to the Internet for leaderboards and storing or retrieving cloud saves. This is important, and a lot of big-name game companies forget that we aren't all connected to the Internet 24/7/365, either because of travel, or because having Internet service in your home is still pretty expensive, even in 2026.

And you know how I said "your native language" earlier instead of just "English?" Yeah. Wagotabi is available in a dozen different languages, although they are all about teaching Japanese. So if your native language is, say, Polish, you're learning Japanese, with other information given in Polish.

My one warning about Wagotabi is this: have a designated Japanese notebook and pencil ready when you first start the game, as stopping to write down new words as they are presented definitely helps you to learn them more easily. Actually, no, I have a second warning: This game is addictive, to the point that it warns you when you've spent an hour on it so you don't over-do it. When is the last time you heard a piece of educational software described as "addictive?" Probably not recently.

I give Wagotabi a 10/10. If you want to learn Japanese, then you should definitely pick up the free demo on Steam, Itch, or your phone's app store and check it out. It's one of those few educational games that gets it right.