Practice · spaced repetition

Kanji, a few a day.

All 109 kanji on the JLPT N5 list are in this deck, mixed up, so the easy ones such as 一, 二 and 三 do not all come first. The order is your own and stays the same each day. You meet ten new ones a day, and each comes back just before you would forget it.

How it works

You see a kanji and say what it means and how it is read. Turn the card to check the meaning, the two kinds of reading and an example word, then answer honestly: Again, Hard, Good or Easy. There is nothing to add: every kanji is already in the deck.

The schedule. A kanji you know comes back after eight hours, then a day, two days, a week, two weeks, a month and four months. After that it is retired. Get one wrong and it drops back two steps.

The four answers move it along that ladder. Again means you did not know it: it drops back two steps and is shown once more before you finish. Hard means you got there slowly: it stays on its step and comes back after the same gap. Good means you knew it: up one step. Easy means it was obvious: up two steps, so it gets to Solid in about a week instead of about three and a half.

Ten new a day is a limit, not a target, and you can change it under Settings. At ten a day all 109 take eleven days to meet, which is quick. If the reviews pile up, lower it to three or four, the pace of the kanji course.

Then the words they make. Once you know a few kanji, the kanji compounds deck brings in the N5 words written with them, such as 学校 and 先生, each one only when you know both its kanji.

This deck tests recognition. The kanji course teaches each character properly, with its parts, a memory hook and handwriting, and the two share one record: a kanji you write in the course moves along here too.