Learn Japanese

The picker is weighted. Every kana you miss gets a bigger slice of the random draw on subsequent turns, so the ones giving you trouble come back more often — and the ones you breeze through fade into the background. The weighting is per-character and persists between sessions in your browser's localStorage. Clear that storage and the trainer resets to neutral.

If a character keeps catching you out (about five misses without recovery), a small tricky one badge appears under the answer. That's a cue to slow down on it — read a quick Tofugu mnemonic, write it out on paper, then come back. The badge clears itself once you start getting it right.

Multi-font practice (the Fonts table above) is for after you can read the default style fluently. Real Japanese text shows up in many shapes — pencil scribbles, posters, retro game pixels — and the brain learns to abstract the identity of each kana faster when it's seen in a few styles. Tick a few extras when you feel ready; the quiz will rotate through them randomly.

The pair of tick marks beside a kana (called dakuten) softens the consonant: k → g, t → d, h/f → b, s/ts → z, sh/ch → j. A small circle (handakuten) on the は-row turns h → p: は (ha) → ぱ (pa).

The small kana ゃ ゅ ょ glue onto an i-row character to form a single syllable — き (ki) plus ゃ becomes きゃ (kya). The small っ doesn't make a sound itself; it doubles the consonant of the next kana, like a half-beat pause: にっぽん (nippon), がっこう (gakkou).

Tap Play sound to hear the current kana spoken by your browser's voice synthesizer. Stroke order pops up the stroke-order animation (sourced from Wikimedia Commons) right on the page. Skip moves on and counts the current character as missed.

Keyboard: type the romaji, then press Space or Enter to skip / advance.

Two modes. Meaning shows the kanji and you type an English meaning. Reading shows the kanji and you type any valid reading in romaji — the trainer accepts any of its on'yomi or kun'yomi.

Adaptive recall. Kanji you miss come back more often. Stats persist per kanji in your browser's localStorage (separate from the kana trainer's history).

Tricky-one flag. A kanji caught out by you five+ times (with misses outpacing successes) gets a small badge. Slow down, write it on paper, then come back. The flag clears once you recover.

Filters compound. A kanji is in the pool only if it matches your selections on all three axes.

Data. Kanji metadata from KANJIDIC2 by EDRDG, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This is an Anki-style spaced-repetition deck. A card shows a word; tap it (or press Space) to flip and reveal the reading, romaji, and meaning. Then grade how well you knew it: Again, Hard, Good, or Easy.

New cards start with short learning steps (a minute, then ten) and graduate to day-scale intervals once you get them right. Cards you find easy come back rarely; cards you miss reset to short intervals and resurface quickly. Your schedule is saved to your account and syncs across devices.

Keyboard: Space flips; then 1 Again, 2 Hard, 3 Good, 4 Easy (Space = Good).