Emaki: learn English inside a story, in your browser

An emaki (絵巻) is a Japanese picture scroll. You unroll it and the story moves along with the picture. Emaki borrows that idea for learning English: one small town, one long scroll, and a story you take part in.

Season 1, The Notebook, is out today. Open emaki.milisp.dev and the first chapter starts. There’s no account to make and nothing to install.

The story

It’s your first day at a boarding school in a small town. On the station platform, a woman in a grey coat leaves an old notebook behind. Two students wrote it thirty years ago, at your new school, and signed it only N. and T.

Hana wants it for the school paper. The paper will be shut down unless it prints a real story by Saturday’s festival. Theo thinks the notebook is private. Both of them are right. Over eight chapters, about two hours in all, you move into the dorm, file a form at the lost property office, sit your first class, interview the canteen’s cook, and get to the festival, where you find out at last who N. is.

It plays like a film

Each line gets its own shot. You see the speaker while they talk, a close-up of whatever they’re talking about, and a dip to paper between scenes. People walk from place to place, and the town’s traffic keeps moving while they do.

Each chapter opens with a choice. Watch it as a film, with nothing to press, or play it at Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. Tap or press Space to move on sooner. Come back later and it offers to pick up at the line where you stopped.

Your lines wait for you

When it’s your turn, the story waits. Tap a reply, or say it into the microphone and get a score for how it sounded. “Sorry, could you say that again?” is always one of the choices, and it gets you the line again, more slowly. You only overhear some scenes, but you can take a part in them.

At your turn you can also tap anyone or anything on screen to hear its name and keep it.

Your notebook

The notebook keeps what the story gives you: things to do, clues (with gaps where you didn’t ask), the people you’ve met, and your words. Cast shows everyone you’ve met, one at a time.

Under the hood

Emaki runs on three.js and WebGPU, and falls back to WebGL 2 in browsers without WebGPU. It works on a laptop and on a phone. You can also install it to your home screen like an app.

What’s next

Season 1 ends on Season 2, The Clock, which is coming soon. The station clock has said 8:40 for thirty years, and nobody has ever fixed it.

Play Season 1: emaki.milisp.dev

There’s a feedback button in the top corner of the page. You can also email help@milisp.dev.