So I'm studying on smart.fm and I check the comments and I see someone asking for a kanji reading app. I add the one I recently found and find awesome, readthekanji.com. They charge past JLPT4, but right now they're giving lifetime accounts away for only $10. I'm a huge cheapskate (とてもけち) but even I thought it was worth it. High quality, very engaging, almost totally customizable quizzes, and cool progress tracking.

Checking out the others that were posted among the comments, I was not so impressed. The first one, http://www.japanese-kanji.com/ just wouldn't work. I don't know if it's my browser, (Chrome on Ubuntu 9.04) or a problem on their end, but it didn't work for me.

The second, http://www.nekopy.com/study/kanji/index.html looks interesting. It's entirely in Japanese, but since it's a kanji learning site, it uses very little kanji. It's not hard to figure out. You have six levels of kanji study (かんじべんきょう) and kanji games (かんじゲーム) to go with them. The games are actually like nothing I've ever seen before. You are given a partial kanji and five other partial kanji and you have to pick which option goes with the one you are given. Another game gives you a word/pronunciation/reading/whatever and you have to pick the kanji. Another gives you the romaji around the kanji, instead of for the kanji itself. The next gives you six kanji and you have to make a two-kanji combo word, and then enter the reading (よみがな) if you mess with that option. The fifth shows you a 3 kanji in a specific order for a few seconds, then rearranges them and has you put them back in order. I don't know if these are words or not. The next just has you choose the stroke order of a given kanji from the options. This seems like a good tool, but is inaccessible unless you know hiragana and the english meanings.

I still think readthekanji comes out on top. I don't see why they can't be add or user supported like smart.fm, but the small bit that I paid was worth it to me. Forcing you to memorize how a kanji or combo is read in a sentece (and many others) forces you to really use it as a language. I turn off the english display in the quiz or course, to prevent it being a crutch. It displays that in the answer, along with progress in the combo and all individual kanji in it.


Well, that's my discovery of the day.