Getting Started with KanjiN: Your First Handwritten Kanji Drill

KanjiN asks you to do one thing that most kanji apps do not: write every answer by hand. There are no multiple-choice buttons in the Writing and Reading Drills. You see the question, you write the kanji or its reading on the screen, and the app reads your handwriting. This post walks through a first session, from the home screen to your first finished drill.

What Is KanjiN?

KanjiN, カンジン in Japan, is a handwritten kanji practice app for iPhone and iPad. It covers the kanji of Japanese elementary school by grade (1 to 6), the Kanken by level (10 to 5) and the JLPT by level (N5 to N3). It has no ads. Today’s Drill, the Skill Check and Today’s Challenge are free, and a one-time purchase opens every drill. There is no subscription.

Before You Start: One Download

Handwriting recognition runs on a Japanese recognition model. The app downloads it before your first drill, so the very first start needs an internet connection. If you are offline at that moment, the app tells you the download failed, and you can simply try again once you are connected.

Step 1: Look at the Home Screen

The Home tab has four things on it:

• A calendar, where finished days get a stamp.
• Skill Check, which estimates your level.
• Today’s Drill, one drill picked for the day.
• Today’s Challenge, a short timed or streak-based game.

All four are free. You can use the app every day with only these, and for a while that may be all you need.

Step 2: Take the Skill Check

If you are not sure where to start, begin here. The Skill Check gives you 10 writing and reading questions and then shows an estimated level as a school grade. The Home screen remembers it, so you can see “Current level” there afterwards and run the check again another day.

For a child, the result is a good hint for which grade to practice. For an adult learner, it is a quick, honest picture of how much of the school kanji you can actually produce by hand, which is often less than you can recognize.

Step 3: Try Today’s Drill

Today’s Drill changes every day. Tap it and the drill opens. For drills that depend on a level, you choose which levels to practice first.

The two core drills work like this:

• Writing Drill: you are shown a reading and write the matching kanji.
• Reading Drill: you are shown a kanji and write its reading in hiragana, by hand.

Write inside the canvas with your finger, or with a stylus on iPad. Take your time with each stroke. The recognizer reads the shape you write, so a clear character matters more than speed. If you cannot answer a question in the Writing Drill, you can pass it and move on, and the app keeps count of how many you passed.

When the Writing or Reading Drill ends, the result includes a question review of each item. That review is where most of the learning happens, so do not skip past it.

Step 4: Place Your Stamp

After you finish a drill or a challenge, the app takes you to the calendar and asks you to tap today’s date to place a stamp. It is a small thing. For a child, a row of stamps is a reason to come back tomorrow, and I think that is exactly the right size of reward for kanji practice.

Step 5: Try a Challenge

Today’s Challenge is one of two short games:

• Speed Challenge: can you get 5 right in 30 seconds?
• Focus Challenge: how many can you answer in a row? The app keeps your personal best.

These are a good way to finish a session on a light note.

Step 6: Explore the Drills Tab

The Drills tab lists every drill: Writing Drill, Reading Drill, Writing Test, Reading Test, Reading Match, Radical Sort, Category Sort, Stroke Order Drill, Radical Builder and Idiom Puzzle. Before the purchase, all of them except the day’s drill show a lock, and tapping one explains how to open everything.

When you start a drill, a settings dialog opens. Choose a category (School, Kanken or JLPT), tick the levels you want, and set the number of questions. You can mix levels across categories, and you can add folders from My Data to the same session.

A reasonable first week: the Writing and Reading Drills at your Skill Check grade, with the Stroke Order Drill on days when you want something calmer. The puzzles, such as Radical Sort and Radical Builder, are a good change of pace once the basics feel steady.

Step 7: Add Your Own Questions in My Data

Every learner has a few kanji that refuse to stick. The My Data tab is for those. Create a folder, then add a question with three parts: an example sentence, the answer kanji, and its reading in hiragana. The app shows an estimated school grade for the kanji you add. Your folders can be synced with iCloud.

For a child, a folder of this week’s school kanji turns homework into drill material. For an adult, a folder of kanji you met and got wrong is often the most useful practice there is.

A Note for Parents

Purchases and some settings sit behind a short grown-ups check that asks for the current year. It is there so that a child cannot make the purchase by accident.

Where to Go Next

To see which learners KanjiN suits, read Who Is KanjiN For?, and to see how it compares with drill books, Kanken workbooks and other apps, read KanjiN vs Other Ways to Practice Kanji. More about the app is on the KanjiN page.

Start with the Skill Check and write your first ten answers by hand.