Lost Gaijin

Game premise and mechanics

Lost Gaijin is a Japanese-learning text adventure set in a simulated version of 1994 Japan. You start with ¥250,000, a paper address, and limited Japanese language skills. The game has no fixed dialogue trees; instead, you type inputs freely in English, Japanese, or a mix of both. Your decisions shape an ongoing narrative, with the Storyteller interpreting your actions and the Coach providing feedback on your language use.

Language learning system

The game includes a personalized spaced-repetition system for the kanji you encounter. Learning is tracked so that correct writing extends the time until you see the kanji again, while mistakes bring frequent reviews. There are 2,136 jōyō kanji mapped, and the game provides an offline dictionary with over 432,000 entries for word lookup, including more than 6,300 human-recorded pronunciations.