About EdoQuest
A Japanese learning app built around spaced repetition and an Edo-period journey.
The team behind EdoQuest 開祖
Stijn made EdoQuest, founded the company that builds it, and leads the team. He has spent the greater part of his life in Japan and speaks the language fluently - which is why this app teaches the writing system as a system, with real etymology, rather than as a list to be survived.
Away from the screen he is usually out on a motorcycle; the photograph is from the 能登半島 Noto Peninsula, where the road runs along the sea. Stijn's favorite Japanese food is 刺身 sashimi, 叩き seared and sliced or 浜焼き grilled on the shore - ask about any of them and you will not get a short answer.
Why it is built this way
Because the usual approach treats two thousand characters as a list to be survived, and they are not a list. They are a system: characters are built from pieces, the pieces carry meaning, and the histories are real and mostly knowable. Teaching that as invented stories gets you through a week and leaves you with a second thing to forget.
Everything that follows from that decision (what the scheduler does, what a level means, what is free and what is not) is written out in the guide 案内, and every source is named on the sources page 典拠.
The company
EdoQuest is made by SunForest BV, a software company registered in Belgium, enterprise number 0792.393.691. Its main business is industrial software - systems for pharmaceuticals, infrastructure and similar sectors, where software is expected to keep running and be maintained for years rather than shipped and forgotten.
EdoQuest is one of the things it builds, and the one that came from somewhere personal rather than from a brief - out of the years in Japan above, and a conviction that the writing system deserves better than being survived. It is not what pays the bills here, which is precisely why it can keep the whole first stretch free and refuse the mechanics that normally fund an app like this.
That is worth a sentence for one reason. Spaced repetition is a commitment measured in years, and a fair question to ask of anything holding two years of your review history is whether it will still be there to hold it. EdoQuest is paid for by a working business, not by a round that has to be raised again.
What we do with your data is set out in the privacy policy, and what we owe each other in the terms of service.
Getting in touch
One address, read by the team, whatever you are writing about - the box 目安箱. Feedback and feature requests included; EdoQuest is small enough that one good letter still changes it.