The 1,026 kanji

1One kanji inside a phrase

A character is never shown on its own with "how do you read this?". Every question is a short phrase, with one kanji in it as the target - for instance, reading 歌手 in アイドル歌手.

A reading is not fixed by the character alone. 右 can be read みぎ or ゆう, and which one it is depends on the words around it. Asked in isolation, what a child memorises would not carry over to actual reading and writing.

2Two ways of asking

The same phrase yields two kinds of question.

• Reading - the kanji is boxed in the phrase, and you give its reading in kana
• Writing - the kanji is left blank in the phrase, and you supply the character

You do not write the answer by hand: ten candidates appear below, and you pick from them - kana for a reading question, characters for a writing one. The candidates are chosen on the server, mixing in similar-looking characters and others with the same reading, so guessing does not get you far.

Take the phrase アイドル歌手. As a reading question, 歌手 is boxed and the answer is かしゅ; as a writing question, the same place is left blank and you assemble 歌 and 手.

Compounds are not split into single characters. 歌手 stays as one unit: pulled out on its own, 歌 loses the very context that makes it read か.

The phrases are short and everyday - アイロン台 (ironing board), あしたは晴れ (fine tomorrow), きゅう食の時間 (school lunch time). Each school year has somewhere between 400 and 1,200 of them.

Stroke order and the fine points of brush shape are not checked. There is no handwriting on screen, so that side belongs to practice on paper.

3The unit is character times reading

What gets scored is not the character. 右/みぎ and 右/ゆう count as two separate units.

It is common to have one reading firmly and not the other. Scored per character, that difference disappears from the record, and practice keeps landing on the reading you already know.

So although 1,026 characters are covered, the number of things actually being practised is considerably larger.

4Furigana on what has not been taught

The phrases contain kanji that have not been taught yet at that year - unavoidable if the phrases are to read naturally. Those carry small furigana above them.

Characters already taught in earlier years are left as kanji rather than spelled out in kana - turning readable characters back into kana makes a phrase harder to read, not easier. This can be changed in the settings.

5Choose a year, or a single character

By default a whole school year is selected, so a first-year child sees only first-year characters. You can also pick individual characters: the screen is a tab per year over a grid of one cell per character, and the weaker ones are shaded darker - so the selection screen doubles as a map of where the gaps are.

Left alone, the app decides where you are weak and weights the questions towards it.

6A missed kanji stays until it is right

A kanji you get wrong is kept on a list, and it stays there until you get it right - not cleared the next day, not cleared after a week away.

The Android app this was ported from discarded the day's mistakes overnight. Discarded, a mistake can simply be forgotten as a mistake. That behaviour was changed.

7What is not covered

No kanji beyond elementary school. No stroke order, no radicals, no character origins, and no mapping to the Kanji Kentei grades. This drill does one thing: making the characters of elementary school readable and writable.