UmaKuma Updates

John: playable countries stay Japan, the United States and Canada. The runs route validated mapCountry against 'is this a country', which after opening thirty of them would have let a crafted request start a run on France with no subject ids behind it; it asks isPlayableMapCountry now. Thailand, China, Australia and Taiwan lose adminOnly at the same time - they are the same generated Natural Earth data as the other twenty-five now open, so hiding four of thirty had stopped meaning anything. Requested 2026-09-04 by John.

Area

games

Name

「ひとにぎり」 · 一握り Hitonigiri · a handful to play among the thirty you may read

Every Natural Earth country is readable now, grouped by part of the world behind Japan. What is shown for them is what is true and nothing else, which took work: the generated metadata was not thin but wrong. Natural Earth's boundaries carry no capital, population or area, and the builder filled the gaps anyway - the capital took the division's own name, so Aisne's capital was Aisne and Ain's was Rhone-Alpes, which is a region rather than a city. Japan, the United States and Canada keep the facts a person wrote for them. For the rest the capital comes from Populated Places where it really marks one - silent for ninety-four of France's ninety-six departments, which is the correct answer - and everything the boundaries cannot answer is left out. Reading a map is now separate from playing it: the game reserves subject ids per country and stores them on every run, so a country joins the game when somebody assigns it a range, not when its outlines arrive.

Area

games

Name

「なみいる」 · 並み居る Namiiru · all of them gathered, each saying only what it knows

A flat row of every country was fine at three and cramped at seven, and would be a wall at thirty with the one country the site is about lost inside it. Japan stands on its own at the front; everywhere else is reached by naming a part of the world first, then the country, with Done to collapse it again. Whatever is open stays visible even when it is neither Japan nor in the part being browsed. Requested 2026-09-04 by John, twice.

Area

games

Name

「たちより」 · 立ち寄り Tachiyori · a stop along the way, then on to the country you wanted

Double-clicking the map only worked on a region, and it re-centred on that region's middle - so asking to look closer at a coastline threw the whole country sideways, and a second double-click landed somewhere nobody had chosen. It works anywhere on the map now, the sea between islands included, and the spot under the pointer stays exactly where it was while the map grows around it. Alt, or Option, with a double-click goes back out.

Area

games

Name

「そこへ」 · 其処へ Sokohe · to that very spot, and no other

0.405.0 began loading a country's data only when a map draws it, and left the region list memoised on the country alone. A country's first render happens before its chunk arrives, so the empty list built on that pass was kept: the map drew forty-seven prefectures beside a panel reading All 0 prefectures. The list now waits for the data it is listing.

Area

games

Name

「すみずみ」 · 隅々 Sumizumi · every corner of it, listed again

Turning Cities on lit the country map and left the shape in the panel beside it bare, so one switch meant two different things depending which map you were looking at. The panel is handed the very same cities the map is drawing, narrowed to the region it frames, so it follows the switch and the density without a second control to keep in step.

Area

games

Name

「こだま」 · 木霊 Kodama · an echo: the panel answers the map

A map page loaded all seven countries at once, because geoRegion.ts imported fourteen data files at the top and built every one of them eagerly. That is three and a half megabytes, of which Canada is a megabyte on its own and the four admin-only countries are 1.6 MB a public visitor downloads and is then refused by the page. Each country is its own chunk now, fetched when a map actually draws it. Measured on production builds: Japan 3651 KB to 682 KB, the United States 3394 to 991, Canada 3421 to 1641. The gate on the pilot countries now holds at the network as well as at the page, since nobody downloads a country they cannot open.

Area

games

Name

「けいりょう」 · 軽量 Keiryou · light to carry: one country at a time

Cities on every map that has them, Japan and the United States included, and neither needed migrating to Natural Earth. The United States is drawn through Albers USA, which the builder rebuilds exactly and which carries Alaska and Hawaii in their own insets, so Anchorage and Honolulu land in the boxes already drawn. Japan's outlines are curated Mercator paths with no projection in code, so the transform is recovered by least squares and the build refuses to write a file unless every city sits inside its own prefecture; Okinawa's cities ride into its inset box with its outline. Cities are matched to their division by geometry rather than by name, which took France from none of 58 to all of them. A map that draws cities now credits both holders, since the outlines and the cities are not always the same one.

Area

games

Name

「おおどおり」 · 大通り Oodoori · the main street a town is built along

Natural Earth's Populated Places drawn over the provinces, with a Cities switch and three densities beside it: 14 capitals, 46 major, or all 254. It is a true overlay because the builder makes it one - the points go through the very same projection the boundaries were fitted to, so every city lands inside the province it belongs to. Labels are placed in importance order and skipped where they would collide, and because the label box scales with the map, zooming in finds room for more names. Canada alone: Japan and the United States are drawn from GSI Global Map and Census TopoJSON on their own projections, so a Natural Earth point would land somewhere arbitrary there.

Area

games

Name

「うぶすな」 · 産土 Ubusuna · the ground you were born on

The four pilot countries become the admin's at every entrance and actually work: the runs route took its countries from a literal ["JP","US","CA"], so every pilot start returned 400, while /maps/thailand was a public page anyone could open. One predicate answers for the lobby, the route and the page. JapanMap.tsx goes with its eight callers moved to CountryMap, and the /sources/camap redirect and alias go with it. map:build:all no longer runs the retired Canada builder over ca-map.json, and the accreditation page counts from the manifest and dates itself from the newest dataset it loads rather than the one file the builder skips. The 25 catalogue countries stay built and unloaded.

Area

games

Name

「わけまえ」 · 分け前 Wakemae · the share that is the admin's

Update Canada map accreditation to World maps, describe Natural Earth datasets across Canada, admin pilots (TH, CN, AU, TW) and 25 catalog countries, and present national flags for all 30 countries.

Area

games

Name

「りょうちのこっき」 · 領地の国旗 Ryouchi no Kokki · flags of every land

Choosing a game kept it in the client, so the address never moved: a reload dropped a member back at the hub, the back button left the page entirely, and a game could not be linked to. The game is in the path now - /users/<member>/game/practice - written when a game opens and cleared when the hub returns, so a reload lands where you were, back walks from a game to the hub, and a link opens the game it names. The names in the address are the ones a member reads rather than the ones the database stores, which cannot be renamed; a name that is not a game is a 404 rather than a quiet fall back to the hub. Reported 2026-09-02 by John.

Area

games

Name

「らくらくもどれる」 · 楽々戻れる Rakuraku Modoreru · the address brings you back

The Game page looked like another product. Its header was a banner and a heading six times the size of every other page's, so the games themselves began below the fold; its sub-navigation read in title case while every other section's reads in capitals; and nothing in it lit up to say which game was open. It wears the same header card every member page wears, and the row of games is uppercase and lights the one you are in - the hub lights none, a lobby or a run lights its own. The title case was not a style choice but a browser's own stylesheet, which sets text-transform to none on form controls: the row was built from buttons where the others use links, so the rule on the row never reached them. Reported 2026-09-02 by John.

Area

games

Name

「ゆるやかなそろい」 · 緩やかな揃い Yuruyaka na Soroi · every page in the same clothes

The Map game held every prefecture's shape and a page of facts about it, and showed them one question at a time. The new Map page, under Explore, lays the same data out to be read. A large map fills the page; every region highlights under the pointer or a finger and says its name, and choosing one puts everything known about it beside the map - its name in its own script, its capital, size and population, what it is called, what it is number one for, its food, landmarks, symbols, emblem and history, and for a prefecture the kanji it is written with, each linking to its own page. On a phone the facts come up over the map instead. A country picker switches between Japan, the United States and Canada. The country and the chosen region ride in the address, so a page about Tokyo can be sent to somebody and opens on Tokyo, and the back button walks the choices. Requested 2026-09-01.

Area

games

Name

「つながったとち」 · 繋がった土地 Tsunagatta Tochi · the land, joined up and read

The games drew only from an account's own WaniKani assignments, so a player who had never connected had a pool of nothing: Match and Shiritori answered "Only 0 eligible items are available" while the lobby offered them and the welcome copy promised them by name. The subjects were never personal - they are the shared catalogue, which Daily Challenge has always played straight off - so assignments are treated as a filter rather than the source, and a player without a connection draws the catalogue up to level ten. Not the whole of it: sixty levels of vocabulary is a dictionary rather than a game. A connected player is untouched, since every existing account has assignments and the fallback never fires for them.

Area

games

Name

「たんどくたびだち」 · 単独旅立ち Tandoku Tabidachi · setting out alone

Map handles are numbered west to east, so a round reads 1 2 3 4 across the map instead of the 3 2 4 1 the shuffle happened to deal - and pressing 1 now means the leftmost handle. They also stop overlapping: the old rule called two handles clear at 1.9 radii when circles of radius r touch at 2, so every pair it passed was already into its neighbour, and it had only two positions to try, which left a third crowded region back on top of the first. Handles now try a column of positions and take the first that is clear, vertical before sideways so the numbering survives. Across 48,000 handles on all three maps: no overlaps and none cropped at the frame.

Area

games

Name

「きれいなきょり」 · 綺麗な距離 Kirei na Kyori · a clean distance

The capitals round now skips the twenty-nine Japanese prefectures that share their capital's name, so it asks the eighteen worth knowing: 札幌市 is Hokkaido, 横浜市 is Kanagawa, 名古屋市 is Aichi. Japanese capitals are written in kanji now too, matching the tiles rather than sitting in romaji in a Japanese round.

Area

games

Name

「らいめいらせん」 · 雷鳴螺旋 Raimei Rasen · thunderclap spiral

Map mode can ask by capital city: the prompt names the seat of government and the answer is the region that governs from it. Bismarck is North Dakota, Victoria is British Columbia. It works on all three countries, because every dataset already recorded a capital for every region.

Area

games

Name

「よながのよい」 · 夜長の宵 Yonaga no Yoi · an evening in the long night

Two small regions close together put their handles in the same few pixels, so a choice could be hidden behind another and never clicked - Prince Edward Island behind Nova Scotia. A handle now hangs below its region when the space above is taken. Scoreboards say which country a map run was played on, and member pages follow one width rule instead of three.

Area

games

Name

「ゆきどけよりみち」 · 雪解け寄り道 Yukidoke Yorimichi · a detour through the thaw

Map mode plays on all three countries. The American and Canadian outlines were hand-drawn placeholders - Ontario was five points - and are now built from the Census Bureau and Natural Earth by scripts that can be re-run when a boundary changes. Neighbours come from the map itself, so the wrong answers are the places next door.

Area

games

Name

「もくれんものがたり」 · 木蓮物語 Mokuren Monogatari · a tale told under magnolias

A Canadian round drew the Japanese coastline: the question knew its country and the board did not. The board now reads the country off the question, and the lobby offers only countries whose maps are real - the American and Canadian outlines are placeholder shapes, so they wait until that is fixed rather than being offered unplayable.

Area

games

Name

「めいろのめじるし」 · 迷路の目印 Meiro no Mejirushi · a landmark in the maze

Every country in one flat row was fine at three and cramped at seven; at thirty it would be a hedge of buttons between the reader and the map, with the one country this site is about lost inside it. Japan stands on its own at the front, always, and everywhere else is reached by naming a part of the world and then the country - two clicks to any of them, and never more than a handful on screen. Whatever country is open stays visible even when it is neither Japan nor in the part being browsed, and empty parts are dropped rather than shown with nothing under them.

Area

games

Name

「むらさきのむくげ」 · 紫の木槿 Murasaki no Mukuge · a purple rose of Sharon

Fifty-one states and thirteen provinces and territories join the forty-seven prefectures, as a bonus over the same board rather than a second game. Japan stays the default everywhere, and nothing new is stored: each question's target already carries its country in its id range, so runs recorded before this still read as Japan.

Area

games

Name

「みかづきみさき」 · 三日月岬 Mikazuki Misaki · a crescent moon over the cape

What makes a convincing wrong answer on a map - neighbours first, then region, then proximity - moves out of the Japan question builder so states and provinces use the same rule. Japan scores exactly as before.

Area

games

Name

「へんろへいや」 · 遍路平野 Henro Heiya · pilgrim plain

US states and Canadian provinces get their own reserved subject-id bands beside the prefectures, so map rounds for any country can ride the existing run tables. Japan keeps the exact ids recorded runs already hold.

Area

games

Name

「ふうりんふくろう」 · 風鈴梟 Fuurin Fukurou · wind-chime owl

The map data the capital, country and size games will read is now pinned by tests: region counts, unique ids, a capital and a positive population and area for all 111 divisions, and the comparison helpers.

Area

games

Name

「ひのでひまわり」 · 日の出向日葵 Hinode Himawari · sunrise sunflower

Map data now covers 47 Japanese prefectures, 51 US states and 13 Canadian provinces and territories, each with capital, largest city, population, area and regional metadata, rebuilt reproducibly by the map:build scripts.

Area

games

Name

「ねぶたねりきり」 · ねぶた練り切り Nebuta Nerikiri · festival sweets

One settings row and a smaller corners picker; the duplicate exit button is gone.

Area

games

Name

「けんらんけしき」 · 絢爛景色 Kenran Keshiki · dazzling scenery

Each hub card shows who is playing now, who played it last, and how you did.

Area

games

Name

「きんぴかきんかくじ」 · 金ぴか金閣寺 Kinpika Kinkakuji · gleaming Golden Pavilion

One fixed board for every tile game; Practice drills your tagged lists.

Area

games

Name

「あつあつあんみつ」 · 熱々あんみつ Atsuatsu Anmitsu · piping-hot anmitsu

The 47 prefectures, the first game that needs no WaniKani data at all.

Area

games

Name

「わくわくわし」 · わくわく鷲 Wakuwaku Washi · excited eagle

Answer from the reading, with named difficulty tiers.

Area

games

Name

「ろまんろうそく」 · 浪漫蝋燭 Roman Rousoku · romantic candle

Four-choice rounds with per-item timing and a larger clock.

Area

games

Name

「れとろれっしゃ」 · レトロ列車 Retoro Ressha · retro train

Four games behind one hub: Daily, Time Attack, Shiritori and Practice.

Area

games

Name

「りりしいりゅう」 · 凛々しい龍 Ririshii Ryuu · gallant dragon

Harder distractors, all-item rounds and an endless Ultra run.

Area

games

Name

「らくえんらーめん」 · 楽園ラーメン Rakuen Ramen · paradise ramen

Competitive scoreboards with level-aware scoring.

Area

games

Name

「ゆきみゆず」 · 雪見柚子 Yukimi Yuzu · snow-viewing yuzu

The first game: a shared round the family competes on.

Area

games

Name

「やさしいやたい」 · 優しい屋台 Yasashii Yatai · gentle food stall