Kimariji

Learn to read Japanese.

Progress for every character

Kimariji is an Android app for learning to read hiragana, katakana, kanji and everyday words. The mastery map shows your progress character by character, based on your practice and reviews.

All kana, the first 100 kanji and 100 starter words are free.

Get it on Google Play
The mastery map for hiragana: a tile for each kana with its romaji and a percentage, coloured green where it is known well and orange or brown where it is not

Kanji are built from parts

語, language, is 言, say, beside a part that is itself 五, five, over 口, mouth.

Tap a part to see its strokes and other kanji that use it. Tap the kanji to watch it drawn again.

Kanji with 言

  • 読read
  • 話speak
  • 計measure
Strokes from KanjiVG by Ulrich Apel, CC BY-SA 3.0

More in the app

Seven typefaces

Practice after a kana lesson cycles through seven typefaces, from Textbook to Screen.

  • ようこそTextbook
  • ようこそPrint
  • ようこそPen
  • ようこそBrush
  • ようこそRounded
  • ようこそSign
  • ようこそScreen

Try one kana

Textbook
ね

This is ne, a hiragana character. Look at its shape, then find it in another typeface.

Words

Many words have an example sentence from the Tatoeba project, where people write sentences and translate them; it appears as written there, with the English translation paired with it on Tatoeba.

Word lesson: 水, mizu, water, with the sentence 水をください, Water, please

Look-alikes

Kanji that are easy to confuse, such as 日 and 目, stand side by side with the strokes that differ drawn brighter. Kana pairs like シ and ツ come with a note on how their strokes differ.

The kanji pairs are in Full. Free has the pairs whose kanji are both among the first 100, such as 人 and 入.

The Full version's Easily confused section: 日, day, beside 目, eye, with the inner strokes that differ drawn brighter

Stroke order

Tap a kanji to watch it drawn stroke by stroke, or step through the strokes one at a time.

The details of 語 in the app: the kanji on a stroke-order plate at 14 of 14 strokes, and its parts, 言 plus 吾, with 吾 opened into 五 and 口

Dictionary

Search the Japanese–English dictionary (JMdict) by kana, romaji, kanji or English.

Audio

Every kana, word and example sentence can be played aloud in a text-to-speech voice. The audio comes with the app, so it works without a connection.

Free and Full

The free part stays free, with no time limit. Full is a one-time purchase that adds the rest.

Free and Full, compared
ContentFreeFull
KanjiThe first 100All 2,136 jōyō kanji, Japan's official list for everyday use
Words100 starter wordsAll 888 words

Both include all hiragana and katakana with audio, the Japanese–English dictionary, reviews and tests for the kana, kanji and words you can study, and eight in-app certificates.

Price: €14.90, paid once.

No subscription and no ads. Google Play shows the price in your currency.

Content in detail
Kanji
The free 100 include every kanji on a commonly used JLPT N5 study list, plus 20 from an N4 study list. Of all 2,136, 1,734 split into visual parts; the other 402 are shown whole.
Look-alikes
15 kanji pairs. Two pairs use only kanji from the free 100: 人 and 入, and 木 and 本.
Sentences
86 of the 100 starter words have an example sentence; across all 888 words, 773 do. None of the example sentences has had an independent review by a native speaker; if a sentence reads oddly, report it from its card.
Certificates
Eight in-app certificates, each earned in a test. Every one covers free content.

Good to know

Offline
Lessons, reviews and audio work without a connection.
Reviews
FSRS spaced repetition decides when each card comes back.
Reading only
Stroke order is shown, but there is no handwriting practice.
Languages
The interface is in English, Finnish, German and Spanish. Meanings for the first 100 kanji, the starter words and the kana example words follow that choice; other meanings and the sentence translations are in English.
Your data
No account and no tracking. Progress is stored on your phone, not on our servers, and you can back it up to a file you keep. Privacy details

Get Kimariji

For Android. All kana, the first 100 kanji and 100 starter words are free; Full is a one-time purchase.

Get it on Google Play