Kanjideck is a no-shortcuts deck for learning Japanese Kanji with the super-power of spaced repetition, a proven method famously used by polyglots and medical students alike 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 an insane amount of characters, there is actually a very good way to learn them in a reasonable amount of time: flashcards based spaced repetition. It turns out that putting active recall and spaced repetition together makes for a very efficient way to learn Kanji.

However, spaced-repetition for learning Japanese is typically synonymous with brute-forcing all of the characters into your brain via the use of silly mnemonics, which stick faster. Most resources use them extensively and ignore the surrounding context, character components, etc. And we've found that approach is 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 reading components with okurigana and compound examples with Kanji you already know)!

(The usage instructions and in-depth explanation can be found on the guide! The physical deck also has a pointer to the guide online.)

Three years ago, I had been studying Japanese for roughly 500 days in a row when I came up with a list of the principles that ended up guiding the design of Kanjideck.

I was frustrated by the learning resources I was using. And I had figured why after so much time using them: exaggerated focus on mnemonics, difficulty to break apart the character and recognize known components, and often presented in total isolation from the language.

I was confident I could create a resource to study for myself, but it took a few failed attempts, some back-burner time over the years, and many iterations before I arrived at the design I'm proud to show you today!

The deck of cards we ended up creating far exceeded my expectations. It was delightful straight away, and it still is, after months using it daily.

We have created a Japanese learning resource which we find is truly useful, and we want to get it out to everyone!

But we cannot build it without your help.

That's why we're calling out to all casual language learners and serious students, teachers and schools; to parents looking for a very challenging flashcard activity; to those traveling or living in Japan; to Anime and Manga fans; and to people looking for a beautifully designed paperweight:

Help us make Kanjideck a reality! We think you'll love it as much as we do.

Kanjideck was originally meant to be a digital-only deck for the Anki open source spaced repetition software. However, the design of each card turned out so beautiful that we figured we'd print them out.

We decided that 2136 Kanji would be just about too many cards, but we could have a small physical deck, perfect to get started. After learning all physical cards it would be simple to continue studying with the digital version all the remaining characters.

For the physical decks we created custom cards to form a physical spaced repetition system (akin to a Leitner Box).

And, we also added reference cards with a cheatsheet guide, the Hiragana and Katakana phonetic scripts, and a verb and adjective conjugation card. Refer to the guide for more information about the Japanese writing systems and making the most out of verbs and adjectives in the cards.

There are three physical decks with an increasing amount of cards. The L5 deck is just perfect for getting started: it contains 90 physical cards to help you learn all first 80 Kanji characters commonly needed for the first level of the official Japanese 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.

Then, the L4 deck covers the great majority of characters needed for the JLPT-4 test with its 234 cards, and the L3 deck covers JLPT-3 with 612 cards.

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

Pre-order your deck, now on Kickstarter!

Mogbit, LLC © 2024; Contact