Last updated: September 16, 2026
Nippon Curated at nipponcurated.com is a participant in affiliate advertising programs. This page explains what that means for you, in plain language.
What affiliate links are
Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, I may receive a small commission from the retailer. This costs you nothing extra — the price you pay is exactly the same.
Current status
As of September 4, 2026 I have been accepted into four affiliate programs:
- Hocho-Knife, a Japanese kitchen knife retailer based in Japan. Accepted August 20, 2026. There are one hundred and nineteen tracked links to it on this site, all of them inside my Japanese knife articles. Four of them were added on October 20, 2026, in my comparison of the bunka and the nakiri, five on October 21, 2026, in my guide to choosing a honesuki, and five on October 22, 2026, in my comparison of the honesuki and the petty. Four were added on October 9, 2026, in my comparison of the sujihiki and the gyuto. Fourteen of them were added on October 2, 2026, as a short note near the top of fourteen articles, and each one repeats a knife or stone already recommended further down the same page. Three of them were added on October 2, 2026, in my comparison of the usuba and the nakiri, and the one I recommend to most readers pays me the least. Two of them were added on October 2, 2026, in my comparison of Japanese and German knives, and neither goes to a German knife. Two of them were added on October 1, 2026, in my comparison of the 210mm and 240mm gyuto. Three of them were added on October 1, 2026, in my comparison of the petty knife and the paring knife. Three of them were added on September 30, 2026, in my comparison of the sujihiki and the yanagiba. Three of them were added on September 30, 2026, in my comparison of the kiritsuke and the gyuto. Two of them were added on September 30, 2026, in my comparison of the nakiri and the santoku. Two of them were added on September 28, 2026, in my comparison of knife prices in Japan and abroad. Two of them were added on September 28, 2026, in my piece on chipped knives, and both point at coarse whetstones. Three of them were added on September 26, 2026, in my piece on giving a knife as a gift: a santoku, the name engraving service and gift wrapping. Two of them were added on September 25, 2026, in my guide to honyaki, and the cheaper one is a knife I tell readers is not honyaki at all. Three of them were added on September 25, 2026, in my comparison of VG10 and SG2, and the one I recommend to most readers is the cheapest of the three. Six of them were added on September 21, 2026, in my guide to whetstone grit, and point at four sharpening products: a medium stone, a no-soak ceramic stone, a finishing stone and a flattening stone that costs 27 dollars 99 and pays me the least of the four.
- JapanesePod101, run by Innovative Language Learning. Accepted August 22, 2026, at 25 percent on a cookie that does not expire. There are three tracked links to it on this site, in my guides to Japanese learning apps, business Japanese and Japanese grammar.
- SharpEdge, a retailer of Japanese knives based in Slovenia. Accepted August 23, 2026, at 15 percent on a 30 day cookie. There is one tracked link to it, in my guide to knife shapes, pointing at the knife that guide ranks first. That knife is made by Tojiro, which Hocho-Knife excludes, so it is the first time a recommendation I actually make has been purchasable through a partner.
- The Japan Shop, a Japanese bookshop trading since 2000. Accepted September 4, 2026, at 50 percent on digital bundles and 10 percent on physical goods, the highest percentage of any program I am in. There are six tracked links to it, two placed on September 4, 2026, two on September 6, 2026, one on September 13, 2026 and one on September 23, 2026. The first is in my guide to starting to read Japanese and points at a 49 dollar digital bundle of graded readers, which pays about 24 dollars. The second is in my comparison of JLPT study apps and points at a 28 dollar N5 exam bundle, which pays about 14 dollars. The third and fourth are in that same reading guide and point at the two 99 dollar collections of Makoto Magazine, each of which pays about 49 dollars 50, the largest single payment available to me anywhere on this site. Until September 6, 2026 the graded reader bundle held that position and this page said so. The fifth is in my comparison of JLPT study apps, next to the N5 bundle, and points at the 19 dollar N4 version of it, which pays about 9 dollars 50. That article says in its own text what the N4 bundle is missing: it has no reading book and no practice test.
That is one hundred and twenty nine tracked links across fifty three articles. Every other outbound link on this site pays me nothing, and most of them go to Japanese manufacturers, trade associations and government pages that have no commercial relationship with me of any kind.
Each article states at the top, or in a section of its own, exactly how many tracked links that specific page carries and what they pay. If an article says it earns me nothing, that is because it genuinely carries no tracked link.
About the fourth one, because it is new and it is the one to watch. The Japan Shop sells books rather than software, and it publishes Japanese reading material with audio, which is the gap my guide to reading Japanese runs into and cannot currently fill. That makes it the first partner whose stock overlaps with what my Japanese learning articles are actually about, and it is a heavier conflict of interest than the two knife shops ever were. The program also pays a five dollar bonus on approval. That bonus is triggered by the approval and not by anything you buy, so it is money to me either way and you should know it exists. I told them in my application that the free reading options stay at the top of that guide, and they do. On the day the approval came through I placed two links to that shop and no others: one in my guide to starting to read Japanese, and one in my comparison of JLPT study apps. Two days later, on September 6, 2026, I added two more, both inside that same reading guide, pointing at the two large collections of Makoto Magazine. On September 13, 2026 I added a fifth, inside the existing section of my JLPT comparison, pointing at the N4 exam bundle that the section had already named without a link. Every one of them sits below the free options on its own page, not above them, and each of the three sections, and the N4 part added inside one of them, is marked on the page with the date it was written so that you can tell it apart with certainty. I have worked through none of these products and every section says so. For Makoto I have now read both of the issues the publisher gives away complete, the first and the hundredth, and on September 9, 2026 I put what I found in the hundredth into that section. That included a correction to something I had written about it three days earlier and one point on which the sales copy and the files themselves do not agree. Every other Japanese learning article on this site names this shop, says there is no link on that page, and points here for the current list. If that changes, I will update this page and every affected article the same day.
A correction, August 23, 2026: until today this page said nine tracked links to Hocho-Knife and twelve in total. The real figures were eleven and fourteen. The per-article counts inside each article were correct throughout. I counted the links mechanically this time rather than from memory.
Three things that cut against my own interest
I would rather tell you these myself than have you find them.
First, and this one changed today. Hocho-Knife excludes seven brands from its commission program: Tojiro, Yaxell, Global, Narihira, Hattori, Misono and Forever. Tojiro and Global are the makers whose published material I have leaned on most heavily, and for the first three days of this arrangement I could earn nothing from either. That is no longer wholly true. SharpEdge stocks Tojiro and Yaxell, so two of those seven brands moved inside my incentives on August 23, 2026. Global, Narihira, Hattori, Misono and Forever remain outside both programs. My article on how Japanese knives are actually forged is built almost entirely on documents published by Tojiro, and in two other articles the knife I rank first is most commonly made by Tojiro, which means the recommendation I make most often is the one that used to pay me nothing and could now pay me something. I have not changed a word of any ranking, and the dates on this page exist so that you can check that the approval came after the writing.
Second. JapanesePod101 pays 25 percent with a cookie that never expires. Until September 4, 2026 that was the highest rate I had access to, and this paragraph said so. The Japan Shop now pays more, as the list above says, so I have corrected the claim rather than leaving it standing. In the articles where I have linked it, I have also written down where it stops working: it is a listening and explanation product and it does not make you produce the language, which is the single criterion the whole series is built on. In two further articles I marked it down and placed no link at all, because on those particular topics I do not think it is the right tool. Read the linked sections with the commission in mind, and then check the claims against the free lesson library, which is public.
Third. SharpEdge approved this site knowing it is small and new, and said so in writing. It has sent me no free products, and its stated policy is not to send them to a new partner. On August 27, 2026 it issued me two discount codes. I wrote both of them down on this page before either one appeared anywhere else. The code for me appears nowhere on this site. The code for readers is now in one article, and the entry below says which.
- A code for readers. It is
NIPPONCURATED15%, and the percent sign is part of the code itself. It takes 15 percent off full price items at SharpEdge, and it does not stack with anything already reduced. It stops working on October 31, 2026. If you are reading this after that date and this page still says the same thing, assume the code is dead. On September 16, 2026 I tested it without buying anything. I put the Tojiro santoku that my guide to knife shapes ranks first into a SharpEdge cart and typed the code, and 135 euros became 114.75. The same letters without the percent sign did nothing. After that test I added the code to that guide, next to its tracked link, and to no other article. A purchase is not credited to me because of this code. I asked SharpEdge, and in September 2026 it answered in writing: the code is a discount for the customer and nothing more, it is not tied to my account, and commissions are tracked only through affiliate links. So typing the code at checkout earns me nothing by itself. If you reached SharpEdge through the tracked link in my guide to knife shapes, that link is what credits me, whether or not you also use the code. SharpEdge also told me it will decide close to the end of October whether to extend the code, so until this page says otherwise, the October 31 date stands. - A code for me. It takes 40 percent off one purchase of my own, so that I can buy a knife and test it myself. It works once and then it is spent. I have not used it as of today. When I do, the article that shows that knife will say at the top that I bought it at a 40 percent discount given to me by a company that pays me commission.
The second code is the one that should interest you, because it is worth real money to me and it came to me from a partner. That is why it was on this page before it was in any article.
Programs I have applied to
I have applied to the affiliate programs of Rocket Languages and of Talkpal. Both have been declined, and the position on the two is not the same. A third application, to The Japan Shop, was sent on September 3, 2026 and was approved on September 4, 2026, so that one has moved up into the list above.
Rocket Languages declined my first application. The reason was a mistake I made on the form rather than anything about this site. On August 26, 2026 Rocket wrote back to say it would be happy to accept a corrected application once I give it a ClickBank account name, and I have not done that yet. So I am not in that program, and Rocket pays me nothing today. It offers one of the higher commission rates among the products I write about, several of my articles rank it well, and each of those articles says in its own text that I am not in its program. On September 3, 2026 I was told that Talkpal had declined my application. I applied to that program through Impact, the network it runs the program on. The notice gave no reason. So I am not in that program either, and Talkpal pays me nothing. It appears at 30 percent in my comparison of AI conversation apps, and that article now carries the same fact.
If either of those two programs is opened to me later, links to those products may become affiliate links, and the same rule applies: you never pay more, and I may earn a commission. I will update this page and the affected articles on the day it happens.
Several of the products I recommend most highly have no affiliate program in existence, and I recommend them anyway. That is deliberate and it is the point.
How this affects what I write
It does not. I only recommend products I believe are genuinely good, and I write what I actually think — including the downsides. A commission never buys a better review. If I have not tested something myself, I will say so, and I will tell you what my recommendation is based on instead.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, email me at nipponcurated888@gmail.com and I will be glad to explain.