読み方How to read

A story is a sequence of scenes you read top to bottom, like turning the pages of a book. Everything you need sits in the page itself and in the bottom command bar — no menus to dig through. The app opens in a dark ink theme; a sun / moon toggle switches to a warm washi-paper light canvas whenever you prefer it.

The reading loop

Tap an underlined word (subtle dotted brass underline) to open its flip-card — its vocabulary, or its kanji (stroke order, radicals, mnemonic), depending on the link mode — right over the story. Tap almost anywhere on the card to close it and drop straight back into reading. Conjugations are handled for you: 行きます, 行ったら, 寒くなりました all resolve to their dictionary form (行く, 寒い…) with no effort on your part.
🔊 Listen — each sentence has a speaker icon that plays a clear, natural-sounding reading of that line: a warm Japanese voice, read a touch slowly so an intermediate learner can follow every word. The header speaker reads the whole scene aloud (tap again to stop). The narration is pre-rendered, so once a book is downloaded it plays instantly and offline.
📖 Break it down — each sentence has a book icon that opens the sentence breakdown (described just below). This is where grammar lives — on the sentence, not on the word.
Turn the page — swipe left / right (or use ◀ ▶ in the command bar) to move between scenes, like a book.

The sentence breakdown (📖)

Tap the 📖 under any sentence and a single panel opens over a gently dimmed page: a copy of that sentence on top, and below it — word by word — what each piece means and what it is doing grammatically in this exact sentence. It is the heart of the app. Most reading is meant to flow straight through; you open this only for the words or grammar you don't yet know (and there are far more words than grammar points, so it stays out of your way).

Tap a word in the sentence at the top and its entry glides to the centre and lights up — the word and its explanation together. (A word near the start is highlighted to begin with.)
Scroll the list to move through the sentence at your own pace. Whichever entry sits in the centre is the one highlighted back up in the sentence, so the two stay in sync and you never lose your place in a long line.
文 grammar chip — when a word carries a grammar point, a small 文 chip sits under it. Tap it to flip open the full Bunpou card (pattern, structure, an example with furigana, and a plain-English explanation). The word's meaning is already in the breakdown; the chip is there only if you want the deeper, general grammar lesson — otherwise it never gets in the way.
To close, tap anywhere on the dimmed page outside the panel — there is no close button anywhere in the app. (Out in the normal reading view, tapping a word still opens its Goi / Kanji card as usual.)

Getting around

A top-left ‹‹ back arrow sits on every page and returns you to wherever you came from — the one exception is the reader itself, which keeps a Home button in its bottom bar. A gear, top-right on every page, opens Settings, which holds downloaded-book management, Share, an About link, and a Reset study notebook control that permanently clears your collected words.

The command bar

The controls along the bottom toggle how the story reads:

Goi / Kanji — choose what the underlined words link to: their vocabulary card or their kanji card.
Furigana — turn the reading hints above the kanji on or off.
English — show or hide the per-sentence English translation.
Home — open the library to pick a different book or chapter.

The header carries the rest: a sun / moon theme toggle (the warm washi-paper light mode or the dark ink canvas), a three-step text-size (AA) button — the largest is handy for picking apart dense kanji — and the headphones button, which opens Listening Mode (below). The furigana, English, and text-size controls live right in the header / command bar so they're always a tap away.

Your place is saved automatically — close the app mid-scene and it reopens exactly where you left off. Once a story is loaded, the whole app works offline.

Listening Mode

The headphones button turns the book into listening practice: a small floating player reads whole scenes aloud with the same warm narration, moves to the next scene by itself, and follows along by turning the pages. Its controls live on your lock screen and Control Center too, so AirPods taps work — pause on the way into the station, resume on the platform. The app stays fully usable while it plays.

The study notebook

Every vocabulary word you tap while reading is quietly saved to your study notebook (the small book icon in the reader) — the word, its reading, and its meaning. The notebook shows only the words due for review right now: clear one you knew and it spaces out further (1 → 3 → 7 → 21 days); reveal one you'd forgotten and it comes back soon — until it's simply known. No setup, no deck-building — reading fills it for you. (You can wipe it any time from Settings.)

The library

The story is published as a free, multi-part study series — each part a stretch of chapters, with new parts added as they're finished. Every part appears in the library carousel; tap one to download it. A downloaded part works fully offline; remove it any time and it stays in the carousel, greyed, ready to re-download. Your reading position, settings, and study notebook follow you between your devices through your own iCloud.

日本語読書 · NihonGO Dokusho