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Welcome to Nihoner.

You don't need a complicated plan yet. You need one Japanese thing today, and another one tomorrow. That is the whole method, and it starts right here.

Start here · about 15 minutes Today's mission One focused session combining reading, review, and listening built around what you personally need. It changes every day and remembers where you left off. Begin today's mission →

Come back tomorrow and it will be waiting, one day longer. Not sure where you stand? Take the eight-minute placement test and the whole site adjusts to your level.

読むReading & Literature

Read real Japanese from day one

You don't learn to read by studying vocabulary lists; you learn by reading real sentences.

Read a real Japanese book

229 complete works of Japanese literature, free and legal. Tap any word for its meaning, reading and the kanji inside it — so you can read authentic Japanese without getting stuck.

Open the library

Read at your exact level

Short passages written for the words and kanji you already know, so you read Japanese instead of decoding it. Every word you tap is remembered and comes back to you later.

Start reading

Words to Review Words you met while reading and did not know, returned in their original context. Japanese History Biographies, eras and events explained with vocabulary breakdowns. Cities of Japan 1,680 Japanese towns and cities described in authentic Japanese.

書くWriting & Kanji

Draw it, remember it, master stroke order

Drawing characters by hand creates durable muscle memory that passive recognition never matches.

Handwriting practice

Draw characters directly on your screen and get scored stroke by stroke against how they are actually written. Over 6,702 characters supported with zero latency.

Practise writing

Kanji Hub & List

Search 13,071 kanji with stroke-by-stroke animations, radical breakdowns, onyomi, kunyomi, and all compound words they appear in.

Explore kanji

Stroke order trainer

Interactive game that tests whether you know which stroke comes next, building instinctive stroke habits for both common and complex characters.

Play stroke order

Kanji Blade Forge Drag and drop radicals and building blocks to forge complete kanji characters. Kanji Duel Fast-paced comparison game: which of the two kanji is more common in modern Japanese? Kanji Ronin Survive waves of kanji recall challenges and push your streak to the limit.

話す・聞くSpeaking & Listening

Train your ears and find your voice

Develop real conversational reflexes through authentic speech recognition, dictation, and immediate feedback.

Listening Lab Type what you hear. Natural sentences built from words you know, spoken at real speed. Pronunciation Trainer Speak into your microphone and receive instant pitch and pronunciation feedback. AI Japanese Sensei Ask any question about grammar, sentence nuance, or culture and get a plain explanation at your level. Audio Samurai Rapid-fire audio recognition drill that trains your ear to catch spoken Japanese instinctively. Level Assessment Twenty diagnostic questions that pinpoint your current listening and reading ability. JLPT Level Tracker Track your coverage against the official N5, N4, N3, N2, and N1 exam requirements.

学ぶCourses & Daily Practice

Structured paths, quizzes and daily drills

Step-by-step guidance so you always know what to study next, whether you have five minutes or an hour.

Structured courses

From absolute beginner Hiragana and Katakana to JLPT N5 Foundation, Essential Kanji, and Keigo — each course ends in a final exam and a verified certificate.

Browse all courses

Quizzes Hub

A practice exercise for any of 669,996 dictionary entries, plus 1,153 course quizzes covering kanji, vocabulary, grammar and reading across every JLPT tier.

Take a quiz

Smart Flashcards

Intelligent spaced repetition decks that calculate your forgetting curve and resurface kana, kanji, and words right when recall needs reinforcement.

Start flashcards

Smart Exercises Focused daily drills designed to test sentence structure, particles, and meaning. Grammar Path All 831 grammar patterns arranged in the exact order you actually encounter them. Daily Lesson A fresh, bite-sized written lesson published every morning as part of a continuous series.

調べるReference & Dictionaries

Look up any word, kanji or grammar pattern

Comprehensive, cross-referenced language databases with instant converters and cultural explanations.

Comprehensive Dictionary 669,996 entries with pitch accents, stroke orders, and real example sentences. Japanese Lexicon 194,458 lexical entries — the deepest morphological word bank online. Grammar Reference Search 831 grammar points by meaning, English equivalent, or JLPT level. Vocabulary Collections 7,972 curated core words grouped cleanly from N5 beginner to N1 mastery. Furigana Converter Paste any raw Japanese text to automatically add kana readings above every kanji. Japanese Text Converter Instant conversion between Romaji, Hiragana, and Katakana in both directions. Japanese Encyclopedia Deep dives into Keigo politeness, cultural etiquette, idioms, and historical context. 47 Prefectures of Japan Regional geography, dialects, and cultural specialties across Japan's prefectures. Your Saved Items Every kanji, grammar point, and vocabulary term you star, organized in one place.

遊ぶInteractive Dojo Games

Learn through play, build instinctive muscle memory

Gamified drills that make verb conjugation, tricky particles, and counters feel intuitive rather than tedious.

Conjugation Dojo Master te-form, past, potential, passive, and causative conjugations with live rule hints. Particle Battle Train は, が, を, に, で, and と in authentic sentences with immediate feedback. Sentence Builder Unscramble mixed Japanese sentences and assemble natural grammatical word order. Counter Dojo Master tricky counters (本, 匹, 冊, 枚, 個, つ) and stop guessing how things are counted. Japanese Food Game Learn food vocabulary, ingredients, and restaurant phrases by running a virtual kitchen. All 18 Learning Games Explore the complete games arcade: kana quizzes, kanji duels, hangman, and city maps.

あなたの日本語Your Learning System

One connected record that tracks your real Japanese

Every mission, game and mistake feeds the same learner model. Nothing you practise disappears into a separate score.

Mastery Map See recognition, listening, meaning, production, pronunciation, writing, grammar and retention separately. Error Passport Universal mistake memory: an error in a game shapes tomorrow's reading, writing, and listening. Can-do Roadmap Prove what you can handle in Japanese through fresh, real-world conversational situations. Contrast Lab Meet easily confused words, particles, and kanji side by side until the right choice feels natural. The Nihoner Loop Practice creates evidence. Evidence chooses what returns. What returns becomes usable Japanese. What's New on Nihoner Every new learning feature, book, and exercise added since you signed up, automatically included.

What your free account is

Said plainly, so nothing surprises you later.

Free is not a trial. The library, the games, the dictionary, the kanji hub, the handwriting practice, the daily lesson, the quizzes, and the courses stay free. There is no date when they stop.

Two things have a daily limit. The level-matched reader gives you three passages a day, and the AI tutor has a fair-use cap. Both reset every morning.

Premium removes those limits and adds the parts that need memory: a personal review deck that brings back every word you got wrong, all reader topics, and a progress picture across everything you do. It is $9.99 a month and you can cancel in two clicks.

You do not need it today. Do a week of missions first — if you are still here after that, it will be obvious whether it is worth it.

See what Premium adds Do today's mission

Finding your way back

Three links worth remembering as you start.

Your dashboard Streak, progress, and what to do next. Today's mission The one adaptive 15-minute session, every day. The Learn Hub Your learning roadmap, level check, and course directory.