I studied abroad in China with about 150 other students. At the start, I was one of the weakest in the program. By the end of the year, I was at the top.

The difference wasn’t talent or discipline. It was immersion—specifically through film.

I was obsessed with movies and TV. I bought every DVD I could find and watched them the only way they were available: with Chinese hard-coded subtitles. No translations. No explanations. Just meaning, context, and repetition. I didn’t understand everything—but I understood enough, and that was enough to keep going.

That habit changed everything.

I stayed in China for nearly ten years. I worked in Chinese, translated video games, and eventually helped build them. Later, I went through the same process again with Japanese—once more learning primarily through real media, not textbooks or drills.

Over time, a pattern became clear to me:
Language sticks when it’s learned through meaning, not memorization.

Most language apps focus on fragments—isolated words, abstract sentences, and artificial exercises. But that’s not how people fall in love with a language. They fall in love with stories, characters, emotions, and moments.

Umi exists to recreate the way I actually learned.

We take real video—film, TV, moments that feel alive—and turn them into structured, level-appropriate learning experiences. You’re not just studying a language. You’re understanding it, in context, the way it’s meant to be used.

The goal of Umi is simple:
to make language learning feel less like studying—and more like watching something you can’t stop thinking about.