iKanji for Android

I finished going through literally every kanji the app has to offer (about 2400 of the most common ones) about 3 days ago. Took about 1 year and 3 months of constantly, every day learning 5-12 kanji a day (as I kept getting further ahead I kept increasing daily new kanji) and reviewing already seen kanji using the app’s spaced repetition system. I may have my issues with the app that are more on the technical side, but I have to say this app definitely accomplishes what it advertises. Now I definitely feel a lot more confident when reading. Here are some of the things I did which helped me get learn using this app….While this app worked, I did not leave the teaching alone to it…. 1. Disable writing in the settings of the app. The stroke order may be correct in earlier levels (N5-N2)….when you get to N1 and highschool and 2010 Jouyou most of the kanji have the wrong stroke order. 2. The app’s spaced repetition is not enough. Every time before you go through using the app’s spaced rep system review the first 2 groups in the Kanji To Study / All trained kanji section. I suggest that while reviewing you write the kanji either in the air or on a surface with your finger…You might seem crazy to other people but it does help a lot 3. Buy a Japanese Character Writing Practice Book (you can type it in just like that on Amazon) and get the Anki app (flash cards app). Every time you go through new kanji, write it in anki (they have a windows and Android app as well (front of the card is the meaning and all pronunciations, back is the picture of the kanji…which you can get from jisho.org)…..in groups of 100 kanji, put in tags/folders based off of the level of the iKanji app as well as a group that encompasses all kanji you have added so far (a global group). Every time you go through a brand new kanji for that day, write it through a vertical line of the practice book (basically writing the kanji 20 times) to hopefully get it in your short term memory. Then once you go through all new kanji in the ikanji app, practice 20-50 kanji (I recommend 50) in Anki writing in the practice book. (Using the global group for review) 4. Space yourself out appropriately. Don’t assume you have to review all the kanji the app is telling you to review for that day…I made that mistake and basically by the time I got to the last groups I would be reviewing kanji for basically 6-8 hours every day…..and thats not counting my reading light novels time or watching raw japanese content for listening practice. Space yourself out, with something you’re comfortable with 5. When reviewing using the app’s spaced rep system, be sure to go through each one of the groups and not through the kanji to study section as there is a bug with the kanji to study section where it does not show you all kanji you have yet to review for that day until later in the day…. Also…there is a nice easter egg if you continuously tap on the fox on the top right of the app, it can get mad at you lol Anyways, these steps I mentioned are what worked for me….not going to necesarilly work for everyone else….The app is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but if you can get around the technical issues (specially because this app is no longer supported by the dev), this is an awesome app.

Probably the best kanji app to keep from getting bored that I’ve ever seen. However, the stroke order animation speeds up every time you move to the next kanji. 5 or 6 kanji in the animated stroke order is flashing so quickly that nothing can be learned from it. The old way of simply putting a picture with numbers beside each stroke would have been better. IOS 14.

I found this app incredibly useful. My preferred method is to go through the pre-made sets of 20 each week, writing them out while I have the voice speak (at first I found it annoying that it also reads the vocal examples, but this is now my favorite part as I learn new words). I write the kanji in the app, then use a whiteboard, then make a flash card. I go back later add three kanji a day to the tested kanji. The kanji testing system is brilliant. The only issues I’ve found so far is that the voice trips up any time there is a . in a kunyomi reading. It repeatedly pronounces the next syllable incorrectly. The other is that, despite testing the kanji for ‘one’, the app says I haven’t, but then will go back later and say that I have. Small thing that may just be a glitch on my end. I bought this in a bundle pack with iKana and iKana Nōto. I love all three apps (I used iKana to tutor). I used iKana Nōto a lot more before I made the in-app writing purchase in this one, which may have been a waste of money but I don’t regret it. Turning your device on its side will give you more writing room which took me longer to figure out then it should have. Overall, highly recommend and I wish they had a grammar app too. Don’t buy iKana Nōto if you plan on making the in-app writing purchase.

This app is so clear, clean, and stable, and the ability to tackle kanji by school grade level or JLPT level is wonderful. I’ve been using this app for months, and it’s proven to be a fun way to make progress in the never-ending study of kanji. That said, I see three areas for improvement, which I wouldn’t mind paying a decent amount of money for as add-ons to this app: 1) There is a bug where, as you progress through a set of kanji, the animation that demonstrates the stroke order and direction accelerates with each subsequent kanji character. This means that as you get toward the end of a set, a 15-stroke kanji’s animation is completed, start to finish, in less than one second. A blink of an eye, really. This is frustrating because the human eye simply can’t catch the order of so many strokes in a fraction of a second, and it should be a simple fix. (Note: This is not an added feature that I would pay for: The developer should fix this already, as it’s been this way for months.) 2) All of the on- and kun-yomi quizzes are multiple choice, which is kind of easy. It would be nice to see a text entry option to further challenge learners. 3) The final improvement, and the one I’d pay the most money for, is a free-form kanji drawing/writing option embedded in the “teach me these kanji” sets. Currently, the learner is given a “traceable,” gray-silhouette of the kanji to demonstrate stroke order and direction. This means that even though the learner is tasked with writing the kanji, they can already see the kanji and merely need to trace it, which is pretty weak and no demonstration of deeper learning or mastery in writing. I’d *love* a paid option to swap that out for just a big, blank box where I must draw the kanji from memory with no tracing or silhouette, as if I had to write the kanji on a blank piece of paper. Grading a handwritten kanji character for stroke order, stroke direction, accuracy, and legibility would be a challenge, but many apps already offer such an essential feature for learning hiragana and katakana. Moreover, years ago I had an app that did this for kanji character writing exceptionally well, but developer support for that app waned, and the app was eventually pulled. All in all, I love this app and have been using it daily for about four months now, and my kanji proficiency is almost back to where it was when I had lived in Japan many years ago, but I hope the developer reads this to continue improving this app.

Do not use this app for learning to write kanji. It uses a computer typeface even when teaching strokes, which leads to learning the wrong strokes because handwriting and typed fonts are different. One star, do not use, waste of money, bad app.