Kana Trainer

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.