The last two tools I have written about (Remembering the Kanji and Reviewing the Kanji) have all been about learning the kanji. When learning kanji it’s important to not lose focus of why we are studying in the first place, “to read Japanese”. And it just so happens, that this next tool is a cool website called Read the Kanji.

Read The Kanji gives you Japanese words in Kanji or kana (depending on what you are studying) and  asks you to type in the correct reading. It automatically converts to hiragana so you don’t even have to worry about having Japanese input set up on your computer. The words are also used in sentences so you will learn even more words, usage, and some grammar along the way as well. The site keeps track of your progress and shows you new words and kanji once you have mastered the ones you’ve already seen. It also tracks how well you know the different readings of each character.

The website is great for seeing new sentences and learning new Japanese words and Kanji, but there is actually something about it I like even more, it’s addictive. The feeling of always wanting to do “just one more” means that you will spend ample time learning Japanese. I recommend that you head over to the page right now and check it out. You can find it at the below link:

Read the Kanji

Yesterday, we covered what I consider to be an essential set of books for learning the Japanese kana and kanji. By themselves, Remembering the Kana and Remembering the Kanji are great tools for learning Japanese. So great in fact,  someone has created an entire website to help you use them more efficiently. Besides being a website, Reviewing the Kanji is an SRS (spaced repetition system) that contains all the the kanji in the Remembering the Kanji series.

It keeps track of what you need to study, when you need to study it, and also keeps track of all your progress with various charts and reports. One of the best parts about the site is the social aspect. You can write your story for each kanji and also see what other people are using for theirs (this will make more sense once you get the books).

As far as I know, there is currently no way to sync Remember the kanji and Anki, so you will have to choose which one you want to use from the beginning. Though there does seem to be a plugin for Anki to import “Reviewing the Kanji” progress. Both have pre-made decks containing all the kanji, and in fact the deck for Anki even contains links to the Reviewing the Kanji page. I recommend you try them both out and see which one you like the best. You can find a link to Reviewing the Kanji below:

Reviewing the Kanji