2000+ Discord Members Giveaway + New Free Trials For All!

2000+ Discord Users Giveaway & Fresh New Trials for everyone!

Okay so it’s a little delayed, but I’m happy to announce that in honor of hitting over 2k Discord members, we’re throwing one of our patented and much-beloved (by many, I’m told) MaruMori giveaways!

Similar to last time, the giveaway has two parts to it.

Part 1: All un-subbed users get new free trials! (Yes, an actual giveaway!)

We’re giving everyone who’s not currently subbed another chance to check out the site for free. Y’know, so you can get a feel for the vibes, and the kanjis. Your fresh new free trial can be activated whenever you’d like by clicking the corresponding button on the homepage.

Part 2: Win a lifetime or yearly sub!

From now until December 4th, complete at least 6 grammar lesson tiles and be automatically entered to win a lifetime membership, or one of three yearly subscriptions!

Winners will have their accounts automatically upgraded, and will be notified via email.

Oh and if you’re already subbed but still want in on the fun, that’s allowed too! If you win, you can still either upgrade your subscription (e.g. monthly to yearly) or simply give it away to someone else! ‘Tis the season, after all.

Okay, that’s all about that. Time to open the floodgates and let the giveaway-ing… commence!

Best of luck to all!

JLPT Mock Exams - First Listening Sections now Live!

Wait, off in the distance… is that… is that what I think it is? Is that what you think it is???

Well, one of us is wrong, because it’s not a 2025 trap remix of Jingle Bells featuring Ho-Ho-Ho Williams.

Rather, it’s the joyous sound of our JLPT mock exam listening sections! All playing at once in a cacophonous sonic barrage!!!

That’s right, we’ve pulled it off just in time for the December JLPT. They said we couldn’t do it, and they were almost right, but with a little Maru magic, anything is possible. (Not legal advice.)

Anyway, I’m thrilled to announce that we now have listening sections available for our JLPT mock exams! We’ll be adding more as we go, but for now, there is one full listening section for N5, one for N4, and one for N3. Expect N2 early in the new year, and more of everything as we move forward.

Our listening sections carefully follow the same format as the actual test, giving you a nice idea of how you’ll perform on the real thing. This also means no pausing, and no skipping ahead, so get ready to lock in! We’ve also included our own hand-crafted artwork, featuring many fun and cool MM references!

And if you’ve never taken a JLPT listening test, don’t worry. We’ve got instructions and examples before each section, just like the real test. If you already know the drill, you can also skip these, so no worries.

We hope this is just what you needed to top off your JLPT prep for December, or any upcoming JLPT efforts.

Best of luck, and may the Maru be with you!

N2 Content Drop #17

Anodda day, anodda victowy for da OG (original grammar). Publishing da grammar articles, reading da readings, mastering the vocabs.

What can I say? I remember memes from a few years ago and can aptly apply them to my daily life. It’s on my resumé!

In this week’s drop, we’ve got a string of short(ish) grammar lessons for you, featuring topics such as おまけ～ for “on top of that”, ～ずに済む for “get away without…”, and yet another round-up article! This one features emphatic statements, so get ready to emphasize, exaggerate, and just go crazy.

For vocab, we’ve got 博覧会, 展覧会, and ご覧, all of which use the kanji 覧, so you have to be friends with them. It’s a requirement. I’m sorry…

Then, practice practice practice with this week’s reading featuring a healthy instant ramen (dubious), the adventures of Mochi the dog (cute), and hyaluronic acid injections (...?).

All of this and more available now, in the Sands of Mastery.

Happy studies!

N2 Content Drop #16

The world is changed… I feel it in the air (chilly)... I feel it in the… decorations (pumpkins -> Christmas lights)... I feel it in the… holiday cheer. (It’s November.)

Anyway, with the holidays approaching, what better time to crank down on our studies and get ready to gracefully fail the December JLPT because we were too busy researching gluten-free Christmas cookie recipes. And no, those aren’t mutually exclusive!

This week’s N2 batch features grammar points such as ～きかっけ for reasons and impetuses, 逆に・かえって for unexpected happenings, and not one, but two round-up lessons! That’s so much rounding up, you could practically call us cowboys. (Yee-haw)

Then, expand your vocabulary horizons with words such as 賢い (“clever”), ずる賢い (“devious”), and 悪賢い (“wily”).

Practice all of this in a new reading featuring Potato the Turtle, Mozart and Bach (don’t worry, they aren’t coming back from the dead to eat you), and a spirited discussion between two TV talents who aren’t at all based upon ones that actually exist.

All of this and more awaits you now… In the Sands of Mastery!

Happy studies!

New Mobile Apps Update - v1.0.13 - Adventure Dashboard!

This announcement was meant to be published a few weeks ago already, but it looks like I forgot to publish it (along with the other content announcement). Whoops!

The good news, though, is that even though this announcement talks about one of the newest and most exciting features for making the most out of your MM studies, by now a new release is also shaping up pretty well! So expect v1.0.14 to pop up relatively soon too

But for now, let's get into the details of the Adventure Dashboard, which I'm hoping most of you have gotten to play around with already. But just in case you don't know what it is, I'll go ahead and do a little recap:

The Adventure Dashboard (Mobile edition)

On the adventure screen (both overworld and inside a region), you will now see a new button floating on-screen. Tap on this button to open the dashboard view.

It looks something like this:

Or like this in dark theme:

After opening it, the dashboard gets saved as your default view for Adventure (for this device) from now on, meaning it will automatically open if you go to any of the adventure pages. You can switch back to the artwork view again by tapping on the "MAP" button (at the top), and that will become your default again. This also means you get to bypass all of the region artwork in case that wasn't really your cup of tea!

General Usage

First, let's talk about some of the many things that show up here:

You can see all the regions at a glance, and tapping on them opens the contents of that region (just like how N3 is opened by default for me, as that's my current region).

Hovering over the ( i ) icon will show you a few statistics about your progress in the region:

You also get a progress bar for each region, showing you your overall progress.

As stated above, for me, it opens up N3 by default, as that's the region I'm currently in. Scrolling down (or using the button to scroll automatically!!), you will see that it also expanded the "Chapter" (and Tile) I'm at by default, too:

Now you might be wondering... Chapter? Yep! That's a new thing! We've gone through all the regions and divided the tiles by chapters. For most regions, this comes down to the batches in which we release them (so 5 Grammar Lessons, 1 Reading Exercise, and 1 Unlocks Batch), but in some cases, we've also divided them per topic. It's still the same order as the normal adventure path, though, no changes there!

Anyways, back to the dashboard! Most chapters are minimized to save space, but they will still show you your progress on the tiles in them. You can still tap on the Tile circles to open the corresponding information pop-up modal, but you can also just tap on "SHOW INFO" in case you wish to see the chapter details. The tile you are currently at has its chapter details expanded automatically, and so do the chapters after it. It's only once you go past a chapter that it minimizes by default.

Anything that's greyed out/translucent is something you've already completed before; anything that's prominent is something you still have left to do.

Now you might be thinking, didn't we already have a list view/sidebar for Adventure? You're right! But that view didn't include any of the following functionality:

Searching & Filtering

The best thing about this new view is that you gain the power to search through all our content (which is quite extensive by now!) in a few quick ways!

First up is our search functionality, which works exactly like how you'd expect it to. You search for a specific thing, say "polite form" and it will bring up the lesson(s) corresponding to that query, close any regions without any results, and hide all unrelated tiles.

The real power comes from combining this with our new filters:

Not only can you combine this with Region filters and Tile Type filters, but also our new "Concepts" filters. Things like "Conjugations", or those pesky "Have to" grammar points, now all have their corresponding grammar lessons tagged, making it super easy to figure out where to learn about them or review them again! We think you'll love this feature!

That also brings us to the following filter & functionality:

Bookmarking

We also have a bookmarks filter! Meaning we've also added a way for you to bookmark lessons.

Just tap on the greyed-out bookmark icon next to a tile, and bam! Saved for later! Tap on it again to unmark it.

You can then use the bookmarks filter at the top to quickly view all your bookmarks:

Your bookmarks are also saved on the MM servers, so they're available right away on any device you use!

One last thing: At the top of the view, we've also added a button that opens your current tile automatically. So starting your next tile is as simple as going to adventure and tapping that button to continue where you left off!

So there we have it! The dashboard on mobile! One of the very first features to get a simultaneous web and app release on MaruMori! And also one of many more to come!

As mentioned above, expect the next app update to come relatively soon, as we haven't been sitting still in the time since we actually released this! Study Friends, Profile pages, and, if time allows, the leeches & recently studied pages will all be included in the next release. More on that soon!

Happy Studies!!