Osaka · coming soon
You can cook.
You just can’t
read the shelf.
Kondate is a bilingual recipe app, starting with Kansai. Ingredients come with the Japanese name to look for, how to say it, and the section of the shop it sits in — 薄力粉, not “all-purpose flour” — and your list is grouped the way you walk the aisles.
Not in the stores yet — the badges will link to the listings at launch. The date is at the foot of this page.
The problem
A translation isn’t a shelf name.
Ask a dictionary for “flour” and you get 小麦粉 — correct, and useless in a Kansai supermarket, where what you want from the baking section is 薄力粉. Recipe apps translate the recipe. Kondate gives you the word to look for and the section to look in, which is the part a translation leaves out.
What a dictionary gives you
小麦粉
komugiko · “wheat flour”. The category the whole baking section belongs to, which narrows nothing once you are standing in front of it.
What to look for
薄力粉
hakurikiko · soft wheat flour, baking section 製菓材料. The one you reach for, and the word to scan the shelf for.
Three steps, then you are in the shop.
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01
Pick a recipe
Each ingredient shows the Japanese to look for, how to say it and the section to find it in, underneath the English you already understand.
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02
Curated, not translated
The shelf guide is written by hand, entry by entry. Machine translation gives you 小麦粉 and a shrug; where the guide has no entry yet, the app says so plainly rather than inventing a word you will not find on any packet.
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03
Sorted by aisle
精肉, 青果, 製菓材料 — your list is grouped by section, in the order most Kansai shops are laid out, so you walk the floor once instead of doubling back.
Kansai first, not Japan-generic
Built for the shops you walk to.
Life, Kansai Super and Hankyu Oasis — the chains in your neighbourhood — and a vocabulary that follows Kansai rather than a national average: 青ねぎ where Tokyo would say 長ねぎ. Kondate will never deliver anything or take your payment. When checkout arrives it will hand you to the store’s own net supermarket, which is theirs to run and ours to stay out of.
Offline, and unsigned-in
No account. No signal. Still works.
Every recipe and every shelf name is stored on the phone, because the basement floor of a Japanese supermarket is exactly where the signal dies. Nothing needs an account — sign-in exists only for syncing between your own devices, later.
Coming to Osaka first.
Kondate launches in Osaka before anywhere else — the shelf guide is built around the shops there, section by section.
, Japan time