How to play
Choose what you want to practise on the start screen and press Start. A character appears in the middle of the screen with four or six answers below it. Click or tap the right romaji, or press the number shown in the corner of each answer. A right answer turns green and the next character follows after a moment. A wrong answer turns red, the right one is marked green, and a short note explains the difference. Read it, then press Enter or click Next.
A session has 10, 20 or 50 questions, or runs until you end it. It finishes with a summary: your score, accuracy, best streak and time, the characters that reached the learned level, and the ones you missed, with a button to practise just those again.
What you can practise
Hiragana is the rounded script used for native Japanese words and grammar endings. Katakana is the angular script used for loanwords, foreign names and emphasis. Each has 46 basic characters. Two small marks add 25 more: dakuten, two short dashes, voice the sound (か ka becomes が ga), and handakuten, a small circle, turns h into p (は ha becomes ぱ pa).
Combos, or yōon, join a character ending in i with a small ゃ, ゅ or ょ: き + ゃ = きゃ (kya). There are 21 plain combos and 12 voiced ones; the voiced ones join the set when dakuten is switched on as well. With everything selected you practise 208 characters.
Questions can go from kana to romaji, from romaji to kana, or both at random. In the romaji direction a badge says which script is wanted. If you prefer recall to recognition, switch to typing: you then type the romaji of each kana and press Enter.
How the smart repetition works
Every character has a mastery level from 0 to 5, shown as five dots above the question and as a bar in the progress grid. A right answer raises it by one; a wrong answer lowers it by two. A character counts as learned at level 3 and mastered at level 5.
The next question is drawn at random, but not evenly. A missed character sitting at level 0 is twice as likely to come up as one you have never seen, and twenty times as likely as a mastered one. On top of that, every miss is scheduled to return after two to four other questions, so you fix it while the mistake is fresh. Apart from these planned repeats, none of the last three characters is picked again. Levels are saved in this browser after every answer, so your next visit carries on where you stopped.
Look-alike characters
The wrong answers are not picked at random. When a character has a look-alike in the set you practise, its romaji is usually among the choices: シ shi and ツ tsu, ソ so and ン n, ぬ nu and め me, ね ne, れ re and わ wa, る ru and ろ ro. The other choices usually come from the same row or end in the same vowel, so guessing from the shape of the answers does not help.
For shi and tsu, watch the long stroke: in シ it rises from the bottom left, in ツ it falls from the top right. ソ and ン follow the same rule. Voiced characters are tested against their partners, so ば ba meets ぱ pa, and combos meet their siblings with ゃ, ゅ and ょ.
About romaji
Answers use Hepburn romanization, the system on Japanese signs and in most textbooks: し is shi, ち chi, つ tsu, ふ fu and じ ji. ぢ and づ sound like じ and ず, so they are written ji and zu too; when you are asked for the kana, they appear as “ji (di)” and “zu (du)”, so every question has exactly one right answer. を is written wo but pronounced o. In typing mode other common spellings such as si, tu, hu, zi or sya are accepted, and the Hepburn form is shown.
Controls
- Mouse or touch: click or tap an answer, then Next. The buttons under the screen end the session, open your progress and switch to full screen.
- Keyboard: 1–6 pick an answer, the arrow keys move between answers and Enter picks one, Enter or Space goes to the next question, Esc ends the session, F toggles full screen and S repeats the sound when a Japanese voice is available.
Frequently asked questions
Is my progress saved?
Yes, in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere. To start from zero, open Progress and choose Reset progress; the game asks you to confirm first.
Can I hear the characters?
If your device has a Japanese text-to-speech voice, a Hear it button appears after each answer, and the start screen offers to say every kana aloud. Without such a voice the buttons stay hidden.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The answers are large buttons, and the page does not scroll while you play.