Overlay-chan

Once you’ve created your account, you’ll be greeted by your lovely helper, Overlay-chan.

-chan is a common honorific that we put at the end of names for people that are cute. We often use it with children.

In Japanese, it’s written like this: ちゃん.

Our lovely assistant

Overlay-chan will tell you about how the site is made up, so feel free to follow her through and get a feel for everything.

We’ll also expand on what she says as it becomes relevant throughout this guide^^

Here’s what she says for quick reference:

But here’s the most important thing she’ll tell you, which we’ll talk much more about soon:

Some things to note:

When you create an account, you’ll immediately get a free trial period. No payment information needed.

This will show at the top of your “My Journey” page, which is your homepage at NativShark.

Once this runs out, you can add payment information and continue your studies, which we’ll show how to do near the end of this guide.

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Note that you will still be able to review your flashcards in NativShark even without subscribing, but you won’t be able to continue progressing in your studies or have access to other features when not subscribed.

We understand that we all have various life situations we’re in, so the above is to allow people to maintain what they have learned while they need to take care of life.

Not going backwards (aka doing a minimum review of your flashcards) is very important for later, when you do have the ability to continue your Japanese studies. You can pick up right where you left off instead of needing to relearn what you forgot.

But with that said, the most important thing for now is that you can click on Study Now and you’ll be on your way to your goals.

Keep in mind, even if you’re not subscribed, we still recommend showing up and hitting the Study Now button to avoid losing progress in your studies.

That brings us to our next topic, the most important button on NativShark.