Kanji cards for serious Japanese learning. No silly mnemonics.

Kanjideck is a thoughtfully designed resource for studying Japanese. With spaced repetition, examples, standalone readings, colored radicals, etymology, and more — our decks make learning both efficient and intentional.

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Kanjideck is a no-shortcuts deck for learning Japanese Kanji with the super-power of spaced repetition to study smarter, not harder.

The most challenging part of Japanese is learning the 2136 Kanji characters one needs to be fluent. While it sounds like way too many characters, using active recall and spaced repetition makes it possible to learn them efficiently, in a reasonable amount of time.

However, spaced repetition for learning Japanese is typically synonymous with brute-forcing all characters into your brain via the use of silly mnemonics. Most resources use them extensively and ignore the readings meanings, examples, components, or etymology. And we've found that's not a very good way to learn.

That's why we created a deck of cards built around spaced repetition that has a focus on intentional learning and making each Kanji as immediately useful as possible (through verb and adjective readings, and compound examples with Kanji that you already know)! Read the guide.

The deck will be available in both digital and physical forms. Worldwide shipping.

How to study with Kanjideck?

Put simply, studying Japanese using Kanjideck follows three simple steps:

  1. Review cards you’ve already learned, according to the schedule,
  2. And learn a couple of new cards (3-5),
  3. Every day.

To review a card, pick it up with the colored side facing towards you and try to actively recall, from the Kanji in the center, its meanings and at least one of its readings. Then, practice conjugating verbs, adjectives, and examples.

Example The kanji 「話」has meanings “tale, talk”.

The compound word「電話」is formed by the kanji for “electricity” (電) and the one for “talk” (話), and it means “telephone call”.

And the reading of 「話」with the trailing「す」hiragana character is the verb “to talk” 「話す」. The polite conjugation is 「話します」.

Studying each card means, foundationally, to learn the kanji in that card, but it also means to practice these many aspects of Japanese to contextualize the kanji while improving your fluency overall.

For all the details, read the guide.

What's in the JLPT-5 box?

The standard green Kanji deck has in total 90 physical cards to help you learn all first 80 Kanji characters commonly needed for the first level of the official Japanese language proficiency test (JLPT-5).

The other 10 cards are the tutorial, the hiragana and katakana reference cards, a cheatsheet card for conjugating verbs and adjectives, and 6 cards to form a physical spaced-repetition system.

All physical decks include the reference cards, spaced repetition cards, and access to the virtual deck.

The image below displays the full deck contents:

  • 1 Tutorial card
  • 3 Reference cards
  • 6 Spaced Repetition cards
  • 80 Kanji cards
  • Access to the full digital deck for Anki (with 2136 cards)

Besides the N5 deck, there will also be N4 and N3 physical decks available, as well as the digital deck (with all 2136 Jōyō kanji).

Available Soon

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