Tuition for Maplopo for the remainder of 2024 is $1,200 USD. This price will rise in 2025.

Learners who complete the 10-week program (as well as our self-paced program) with an overall achievement score of 80% or higher receive a cash back rebate of $100.

Companies enrolling employees can purchase bundles at the rate of $4,200 for a minimum of seven seats. This is a 50% discount on individual pricing for your employees, and this discounted pricing will also increase substantially in 2025 because of enhancements made to the program that ensure greater success and improvement with all learners.

More information about Maplopo pricing can be found on our tuition page.

Because we offer extensive opportunities to test out the course with video material on YouTube, numerous worksheets on the site as well as on LinkedIn, and the Maplopo podcast) there are no refunds offered once you enroll in any given Maplopo session. If you’re not yet sure of whether or not Maplopo is right for you, please check out these materials first.

Additionally, Maplopo is designed for busy professionals, and modular in nature. This means you can never really fall behind if you keep at it, and so refunds become unneccessary. If you miss a week, simply skip ahead to the next week and begin anew there. Unlike in a traditional classroom, nothing we cover is so compounding in nature that you’d ever feel lost, or behind. Also, should you need to take a break from your learning, we’ll carry your enrollment over to another scheduled session for a period up to two years. Pretty hard to beat that.

If you’re currently enrolled in Japanese language classes (or, have completed your language studies within a semester prior to enrolling with Maplopo), you may be eligible to enroll under our education partner program.

The partner program for educators and students offers a completion bonus to any student enrolled at an accredited college or university anywhere in the world who completes all requisite coursework for the entire course within one year and with an overall achievement score of 80% or better.

Visit the Maplopo Partners page for more information if you are an educator, or if you are a student, have your favorite faculty member, teacher, or language lab manager reach out to us from using the form on that page. High school educators and students are also welcome!

All prices are listed in USD.

For individuals:

At this time we do not offer any discounts or free trials. On certain occasions, we may create a special offer exclusively available through one of our partners, but only in such instances do we make exceptions.

If you are a college or university student (or, high school student) currently enrolled in Japanese classes (or have taken classes as recently as a semester prior to enrolling with us), please refer your favorite professor to our Maplopo Partners page.

There, they can reach out to enquire about our Educators program which offers a completion bonus to students who finish the course. All students meeting the requirements of enrollment in coursework at any accredited college or university anywhere in the world are eligible for the program. As stated above, high school educators and students are also welcome.

For teams: 

Businesses purchasing seats for multiple users are provided with a significant discount on individual pricing (50% off as of September 23, 2024). We are interested in developing relationships with firms interested in empowering the growth of their employees, and are willing to do so at rates that are affordable to make that happen at scale. If that sounds like you, please reach out. These rates will increase substantially, however, in 2025 because of the increased breadth and depth of the program.

We interface with Stripe for all payments, so we accept all the major ones: American Express, China UnionPay (CUP), Discover & Diners, Japan Credit Bureau (JCB), Mastercard and Visa, Alipay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link, WeChat Pay, Bancontact (Belgium), EPS (Austria), giropay (Germany), iDEAL (the Netherlands), Przelewy24 (Poland), etc.

First, Maplopo is for readers. We attract learners who love to read all sorts of material…, from manga and magazines, to poetry, literature, contemporary fiction, and non-fiction. At the core of what we do is help students learn the language through story. So… our biggest audience is those who love story.

When it comes to the specifics of language, we find Maplopo works best for intermediate and advanced learners of Japanese; those learners of the language who have a firm grasp of grammar, but need and want more—and in that same set of students—those who recognize they want structure that helps them understand the language in a fashion they cannot find in a classroom.

Some learners we work with have set personal goals to pass the JLPT and may have already passed the N3 or the N2… sometimes, the N1. But, many more students have never taken the exam and are studying Japanese with different personal and professional goals in mind. Most learners tell us they join because they believe their Japanese has become a bit stagnant—a particularly true concern for those who live outside Japan and are several years removed from a collegiate experience.

Translators and aspiring translators of Japanese, often join us… largely because they want to learn more about the art and craft of translating. Those students want to tap into one of the most unique parts of Maplopo… our work as translators. Uniquely, during our summer 2024 session we welcomed an American Japanese language teacher who joined our summer program to further hone her own Japanese…, mand soak up interesting angles of learning along with new subject material she could later share with her high school learners.

Learners living in Japan join us to refresh or build upon a near fluency they feel could use improvement. They find communicating at work and around town fairly routine, but often just that. These learners come to us to grasp more deeply what the language is about… the nuance of grammar expressions they may only know on the surface, and to add depth and breadth to their vocabulary.

Maplopo learners also come to us from around the world, in all age groups and with many different personal interests and drivers. We’ve welcomed students from America, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, The Netherlands and Vietnam… from where do you hail?!

Some things are, and some things aren’t.

Our spring, fall and summer sessions run just as if you were in an in-person classroom. Meaning, we cover the material week-by-week for the entire 10-weeks of the program. As such, learners work through the program as they would a typical college or university cohort. However, the entire program is accessible in a way that allows learners to skip around if they wish. The nature of our StoryTeaching™ methodology, however, focuses on keeping folks on the weekly course so they can be guaranteed to finish if they put in the right amount of effort to do so.

Live sessions are obviously not available until, well… until they occur.

If you can read in English, and understand spoken American English, you should be in good shape. Our videos and worksheet materials do have spoken and written Japanese, but the entire course prior to week thirteen is taught in English. Each of our videos is also manually subtitled in English.

We have non-native English speakers from Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Spain and Vietnam in Maplopo who have all performed as well (and often better!) than those who grew up speaking English as a first language.  The trick is having a good grasp of English and the desire to learn.

While you do have “forever-access” to the course, Maplopo programs run on a 15-week track to ensure all students learn as much as  possible and complete the course successfully.

We’ve designed our programming with a host of pedagogical practices in mind, and we move you forward in a way that helps you feel excited about your progress so you complete the course on time, and so your learning sticks. That said, life does get in the way of progress sometimes, and because of that, your access to the course is yours. Should you get too busy to complete a session, we can move you to a future session within a two-year window so you can complete the program at that time. After that two year window has elapsed you would need to re-enroll IF you wished to join a cohort. Access to the course remains yours, however, and you can continue to learn at your own pace for as long as you’d like.

If questions pop up, we are in the private Discord server to help you every day of the week. We also hold office hours to address specific questions, and other students are always on hand to help with questions in the course discussion area. Of course, we’re always reachable privately via email as well.

Additionally, we personally review every learner’s worksheets (50 in all) and writing assignments (15 for public sessions and 10 for self-paced learners), and we hold seven live group sessions (5 for self-paced learners).

Nowhere else will you find this sort of opportunity to engage with Japanese literature translators and language teachers at this sort of price point. Nowhere.