That is not a bad memory — a name is the one thing about a person that means nothing. Namaegao trains exactly that moment: meet, wait, recall. Free, in your browser or on Android.
Four seconds after an introduction, the name is gone — yet you would recognize the face in a crowd a year from now. That is not a bad memory. A name is the one thing about a person that means nothing. A job, a hometown, a story they told — those all connect to what you already know. The name is an arbitrary label, and it arrives alone.
Memory research has a clean demonstration: the same word, presented as an occupation ("he is a baker"), is remembered far better than when presented as a surname ("Mr. Baker")[McWeeny et al., 1987]. The sound is identical. What changed is whether the word meant anything. In other words, forgetting names is not a character flaw — it is what memory does with meaningless material.
Namaegao turns the fix into a game: attach the name to something meaningful, wait, then recall. Repeat at expanding intervals until the name sticks.
Several people introduce themselves with a business card. Time passes — then you have to say who was who. Closest thing to a real networking event, without the risk.
The main game mode: face cards and name cards, solo or with 2–12 people around one phone, plus online matches.
Add photos and names of the people you actually need to remember — colleagues, clients, classmates. The ones you miss come back on a later day, automatically.
India runs on names. A new office floor in Bengaluru, a first-year engineering batch, a family wedding where the guest list crosses two hundred. Namaegao works offline, costs nothing, and runs on the phone you already have.
Forty introductions in one week is normal. Practise tonight what you heard this morning — the ones you miss come back tomorrow, then after three days, then a week.
Card Memory mode rehearses the exact shape of a client meeting: introductions, a gap, then "remind me who was heading analytics?"
Two hundred relatives, half of whom already know your name. Face Notes keeps the score so the second meeting goes better than the first.
Getting a name right in a language not your own is a skill — practising recall beats hoping. Works fully offline, so patchy bandwidth is fine.
Because names are arbitrary labels — the one kind of information about a person that connects to nothing. More in why you forget names instantly.
Yes. Face Notes lets you add photos, names, and details of real colleagues and quiz yourself. Missed people return on a later day.
Yes. The web version plays in your browser with no install; the Android app is on Google Play. It contains ads, but the training itself is free.
A game runs a few minutes. Because the second-day recall matters more than the first evening, the habit that pays is short sessions spread over days — not one long cram the night you meet people.
Photos and names you add in Face Notes are stored on your device. Uploaded photos are not sent to any server. See the privacy policy.
Short, research-based guides — in English and Japanese.
The reason I wanted to make a game about faces, names, and naming in the first place is that I love a Japanese card game called Nanjamonja, made by a shop called Sugorokuya, and have played it many times. Namaegao has its own original rules and content — it is not an imitation of Nanjamonja — but the idea came from how much fun there is in naming something and trying to recall it later.
I wrote a separate page about that experience and about Nanjamonja itself. → Why Nanjamonja Is So Much Fun
Free in your browser, no install.
