Theory
From «this is a pen» to the conditional forms, with tables, diagrams and a thirty-question mini-quiz per unit. Split across N5, N4 and N3.
話 · to speak
Japanese meant to be said out loud
Hanasuka carries 話 inside, the kanji for «to speak». It is a whole academy —theory, listening, speaking, writing, kana, kanji, phrases and history— built so that what you study comes out when you speak, not just in an exam.
Free and no ads. Visits are only measured if you agree.
39theory units
39spoken lessons
2,136kanji
500everyday phrases
What Hanasuka is
A complete Japanese course in English, from hiragana to JLPT N3, with the part that is almost always missing: opening your mouth. Every phrase is heard, repeated into the microphone and written out, and your browser's speech recognition tells you whether you got there or came close.
And a part hardly anyone tells you about: the country's history. Why there are two syllabaries, why the same kanji has three different readings, or why Japan spent two centuries closed off are questions of history, not grammar.
What you will find
- A path ordered by the official exam levels, from N5 to N3.
- Explanations with their reasons: when you get one wrong, the quiz stops and tells you what happened.
- Spaced repetition, which brings back what you studied just before you forget it.
- Your progress in your account: start on your phone, carry on from your laptop.
What you will not find
- Ads, neither out here nor in there.
- Advertising pixels, or social networks that follow you from site to site.
- Lives that run out, or streaks that tell you off.
- A subscription waiting for you at lesson three.
What's inside
Each block with its figure, and all of them add up to the same progress.
39 units
Practice
Every lesson, three times over: you hear it, you say it into the microphone and you write it. The 314 phrases keep piling up, so lesson eight also revises lesson three.
History of Japan
From Jōmon to Reiwa. Each era ends with «what is left of this in your Japanese»: the katakana of loanwords starts with the Portuguese, and standard Japanese is the speech of Edo.
Hiragana and katakana
A listing, a reading quiz and freehand stroke practice. Both syllabaries in full, dakuten included.
Kanji
The complete jōyō set, which is the official list of characters in common use: meaning, on'yomi, kun'yomi, the school year they are taught in Japan and how often they turn up in the press.
Common phrases
With what you actually need to know: when each one is said, and to whom. In Japanese, register changes the sentence itself, not just the tone.
Vocabulary
By topic, word class and level, with its reading and the note that heads off the typical mistake: the verb group, the counter, the word that sounds the same. With a quiz in both directions and a card game.
Daily review
Whatever you finish goes into the deck and comes back the next day, then at 3 days, 7, 14 and a month. Only what you have studied: nobody starts with five hundred cards on their back.
What it can do
The catalogue above says what is inside. This is what the app does while you study, which is what really separates a course from a list of contents.
It listens and tells you whether you got there
You press the microphone, say the phrase, and the browser's speech recognition transcribes it and compares it. There are three possible answers: perfect, almost and try again.
And everything can be heard
Every phrase, every kana and every kanji can be heard, with a second, slower speed for the long ones. In the listening quiz it plays without being shown in writing, which is the closest thing to understanding someone.
The reading above the kanji
Furigana on all the Japanese in the course, and not a single made-up reading: it distributes the one each phrase already has. It switches off with one tap the day you want to read without help.
Tap the Japanese and get it translated
Without leaving the screen and without asking anyone outside: the dictionary is built in and puts the translation together piece by piece when the whole sentence is not in its inventory.
Spaced repetition
What you study comes back just when you would be about to forget it, with intervals that grow longer if you get it right. Only what you have finished goes in, so the review never turns into a wall.
Typing or choosing
Choosing from four is recognising; typing is remembering. You can switch mode in every quiz, and when typing, anything that shows you know it is accepted: kanji, kana or romaji.
Tracing with your finger
Kana and kanji are drawn on the screen. It does not score, on purpose: it is there to be used without the pressure of being measured.
When you get one wrong, it explains why
The quiz stops and tells you what happened, with the reason written out for each question. Getting it right does move on by itself, as there is nothing to read there.
Your progress follows you
It is saved on the server, tied to your account, so you start on your phone and carry on on your laptop. And you can download the whole thing whenever you like.
Pick up an unfinished quiz
If you close halfway through a round of twenty, the home screen offers it when you come back: the same questions, from where you left off. Or you leave it, and it does not come up again.
It reads the way you want
Romaji, furigana, text size and interface language, each with its own switch. They are saved with your progress, so there is no setting them again on each device.
True or false, with a swipe
A card game: each card claims something about a word, a phrase or an idea from Japanese, and you swipe it right if it is true or left if it is false. It is marked and explained on the spot.
Quizzes on what you filter
The kanji, phrase and vocabulary listings can be filtered by level, school year, situation, topic or by what you have already mastered, and the quiz asks only about what is left. That way you can review the N4 kanji or the words you are halfway through.
It tells you what you are struggling with
The home screen shows what you are weakest at among what you have already practised —a kanji, a phrase, a word— with its tally and one tap to go and practise it. With fewer than three attempts it offers no opinion.
No ads
There is no advertising and nobody's pixels. Visits are measured with Google Analytics only if you agree, and you can change that whenever you like. The typeface is served from here and not from a CDN.
A page for each part of Japanese
Explanations to read before you start: what each thing is, how it is read and how it is practised here. With the tables, the syllabus and the vocabulary, all taken from the course's own data.
Hiragana: where Japanese begins
The curvy syllabary. It takes a week to learn and the whole grammar is written with it.
Katakana: the Japanese for what comes from abroad
The angular syllabary. Loanwords, foreign names and onomatopoeia are written with it.
Kanji: the characters that carry the meaning
The 2,136 in common use, with their readings, their school year and their frequency.
Furigana: the reading written above the kanji
The small kana above the kanji. The reading aid that does not change what you are reading.
Romaji: Japanese written with our letters
Japanese in Latin letters: useful in the first week, a ceiling from the second.
Japanese phrases that people actually use
Five hundred phrases with their reading, their audio and the «when it is used» of each one.
Japanese vocabulary: everyday words, by topic
Everyday words by topic and level, with their reading, their meaning and the notes that head off the typical mistake.
Japanese grammar: not difficult, just different
The verb at the end and the particles in charge. The full syllabus, unit by unit.
The JLPT levels, from N5 to N1
The official scale explained, with how many kanji and how many units the course covers at each level.
History of Japan for people studying Japanese
Thirteen eras, from Jōmon to Reiwa, told through what they left in the language.
Speaking Japanese: the part that hardly ever gets practised
Hear the phrase, say it, and have something tell you whether you said it right.
How it works
You study a block
A theory unit, a lesson or an era. At the end there is a mini-quiz, and you do not scrape through by luck: the bar is at 80%.
Getting it wrong is part of it
When you get one wrong, the quiz stops and shows you the answer with its reason. Getting it right moves on by itself, because there is nothing to read there.
What you finish comes back
Whatever you finish goes into the daily review, whether you passed it or not: the unit that trips you up is exactly the one most worth reviewing.
And it stays with you
Your progress lives in your account, not in this browser. Clearing your history no longer wipes out three months of work.
And the tools it brings
Everything can be heard
A Japanese voice, and at half speed when it goes too fast. With one rule: a speaker never gives away the answer.
And said out loud
Your browser's recognition compares what you say with what it should have been, and accepts a «close» without counting it as right.
Writing with your finger
Kana and kanji are traced by hand, on a phone or with a mouse.
Translate by selecting
Select any Japanese in the app and it tells you what it is, word by word. Without asking anyone outside.
Romaji you can switch off
To drop the training wheels once you no longer need them and read it in kana.
And bigger type
Five sizes. Small Japanese is unreadable.
How to learn Japanese as an English speaker
A guide for anyone starting from scratch: where to begin, how long each stage takes, how to split your time, what is genuinely hard and how to practise speaking. It works whether or not you use Hanasuka; where the app helps, it says how.
First things first: the two syllabaries
Japanese is written by mixing three systems, and the way in is through the two syllabaries: hiragana, which the grammar is written with, and katakana, kept mostly for whatever comes from abroad. Each sign is a whole syllable, and with the ones that carry diacritics any sound in the language can be written. It pays to start with hiragana and not to stay on romaji for more than a few days: it lets you say something on the first afternoon, but it hides the syllable structure that verbs are explained on and, after the first week, it holds you back more than it helps.
What works is little and often: a few signs a day, read aloud and written by hand, and as soon as you know a few rows, reading whole words instead of loose signs. There are four traps worth knowing from the start: は is said «wa» when it is a particle, the small っ makes no sound but doubles the consonant, the dash ー lengthens the vowel in katakana and ん counts as a syllable. In Hanasuka each syllabary has its listing, a reading quiz with a tally per character and tracing with your finger, and romaji switches off when it gets in the way.
The stages, and how long each one takes
With twenty or thirty minutes a day, and as a guideline rather than a promise: the two syllabaries take two or three weeks; N5 of the official exam, the level of basic sentences, comes in a few months; N4, which already lets you tell what you did and ask for things politely, in as many again; and N3, where everyday Japanese ends, in around a year or a little more from scratch. What stretches each stage is not so much the grammar as the vocabulary and the kanji, which grow a lot from one level to the next.
Inside Hanasuka the stages are the levels, and everything is tagged with its own. Kana first; then, side by side, the N5 theory units and their spoken lessons, with the vocabulary for that level and the common phrases for the situations you will use most. When you finish a unit or a lesson, its examples go into the daily review. The menu shows how far along you are in each level, so you can see when it is time to move on to the next. Nothing is locked: if you already know something, you can go straight to the unit you want without going through the earlier ones.
A little, but every day
What is reviewed at spaced intervals sticks better than what is crammed in one go, so half an hour a day gets you further than three hours on a Sunday. A split that works: the first few minutes to review what is due, which is what gets lost if you leave it; another stretch for something new, a grammar unit or a lesson; and the end for saying phrases out loud and listening. Kanji and new words in small batches, reviewed the next day, rather than long lists that are forgotten within a week.
In Hanasuka that order almost sets itself. On the home screen, the daily review sits apart and at full width, because it is the only thing that expires: it brings back what you finished the next day, at three days, at a week, at two weeks and at a month. Further down are the unit and the lesson you are halfway through and whatever you are weakest at among what you have practised. Every quiz is as long as you choose, so a short round fits into any wait; and if one is closed halfway, the home screen offers it when you come back so you can carry on where you left off.
What is genuinely hard
For an English speaker pronunciation is the easy part: five pure vowels that never change and few sounds that English lacks. The grammar is different more than difficult, because articles, plurals and agreement between subject and verb disappear, and in exchange the verb goes at the end and particles mark the role of each word. What is genuinely hard is the sheer volume: thousands of words that look nothing like English, except the katakana loanwords, many of them borrowed from English itself, and the kanji, which have several readings depending on the word they appear in.
Two more things take time and are best not taken lightly. The first is the pair は and が, which has no equivalent in English and is understood through hundreds of examples more than through a rule. The second is register: the same sentence changes shape depending on whether you are talking to a friend, a stranger or a customer, and getting it wrong does not sound like a language mistake but like bad manners. That is why Hanasuka's common phrases say when they are used and in which register, and the theory devotes whole units to raising it.
Speaking from day one
You can finish a textbook without ever having said a sentence out loud, and then the sentence does not come out when you need it. Speaking is trained like anything else: you hear the phrase, repeat it copying its rhythm and intonation, and repeat it again until it comes out without thinking. What gives a beginner away most is not the vowels but the length: in Japanese every syllable takes the same time, the small っ is a silence that counts and long vowels last twice as long, so おばさん, «aunt», is not the same as おばあさん, «grandmother».
With nobody to talk to, the microphone helps. In Hanasuka every lesson has a speaking exercise: you say the phrase, the browser's speech recognition transcribes it and the app answers «perfect», «almost» or «try again». It does not judge your accent, only whether you were understood, and the recognition is done by the browser, not the app. Alongside that is the listening quiz, which plays without showing the text. And when the chance comes to talk to someone, for example in a language exchange, the phrases you have already said out loud are the ones that come out.
The typical early mistakes
Staying on romaji for weeks on end, which delays exactly what needs learning. Studying kanji one at a time and in dictionary order, instead of the most frequent ones and inside words. Memorising vocabulary lists without sentences, which are forgotten as soon as you stop reviewing. Translating word for word from English, which produces correct sentences nobody would ever say. And skipping long vowels and double consonants because «you still get the meaning»: often you do not, because they change the word.
The other mistake is one of approach: measuring yourself only by the exam. The JLPT has no speaking or writing section, so you can pass N3 without being able to order a coffee out loud; it is best taken as a reference for where you are and not as the goal. And the last one, the most common: leaving review for when there is time. What is not reviewed is lost within a few days, and getting it back costs more than keeping it would have. That is why review comes first and new material after.
What it does, and does not do, with your data
This is usually in the small print. Here it is in normal print.
No ads
No advertising pixels and no embedded social networks. Google Analytics only loads if you agree.
The typeface is served from here
It is not requested from Google Fonts: doing that would hand them the IP address of everyone who opens the page, and that would have to be declared.
The only third party is Google
And in exactly two places: if you choose to sign in with your Google account, and in the contact form, whose anti-spam is theirs. Everywhere else on this site your browser talks to nobody else.
The microphone is not ours
Speech recognition is done by the browser, and some send the audio to their maker's servers. We do not control that, so we say so.
Cookies, your choice
The session and the local copy of your progress need no permission. Measuring visits does, so you are asked first, with “Reject” as easy to reach as “Accept”, and you can change it from the footer.
Take it with you, or delete it
Downloading all your progress is one button. And deleting your account really deletes it, it does not just switch it off.
What it costs
Nothing. There is no paid plan, no seven-day trial and no button that turns orange at lesson five.
一期一会 (ichigo ichie): every meeting happens only once. If yours with Japanese started here, help keep it free.
DonateQuestions before you start
Do I need to know any Japanese?
No. You start with hiragana and with «this is a pen». If you already know some, the search box and the filters take you straight to whatever is giving you trouble.
Is it any use for the JLPT?
The theory is tagged from N5 to N3 and the kanji from N5 to N1, so yes, it is useful for preparing. With one caveat worth knowing: the split of kanji by level is a reconstruction, not an official document. The Japan Foundation stopped publishing kanji lists in 2010 and this is the de facto list, so other lists differ on the odd character.
Do I need a microphone?
For the speaking part, yes, and a browser that supports it (Chrome and Safari are fine). Everything else works without one.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, and it was designed for the phone first. On a computer you also get keyboard shortcuts, but nothing is missing from the small screen.
Where is my progress stored?
On its own server, in a file of yours tied to your account. No third-party databases and no cloud services in between. You can download the whole thing whenever you like.
Who is behind this?
Jordi Salord, a software developer. Hanasuka is neither a commission nor a product: it is the tool he would have needed himself to learn Japanese from English, and he writes and maintains it. The rest of his work is on his site: jordisalord.com
Is «Hanasuka» good Japanese?
As a spoken phrase, not quite, and it is worth saying so. 話すか (hanasu ka) works among close friends as «so, shall we talk?», but said to an acquaintance, to someone older or to a stranger it sounds blunt, almost like a demand; and said to yourself it means something closer to «do I talk or not?». To invite someone, the natural form is 話そうか (hanasō ka). As a name the sums come out the other way round: it is addressed to nobody, it reads cleanly in Spanish and it carries 話す, «to speak», inside. It was chosen knowingly, not by oversight.
How far does the course go?
The theory, the spoken lessons and the vocabulary cover JLPT N5 to N3, which is where the Japanese used day to day ends: introducing yourself, shopping, getting around, telling what happened and following a normal conversation. The kanji go all the way to N1, because the complete official list of characters in common use is there. There are no mock exams in the official format.
How much time a day does it take?
Twenty or thirty minutes a day is enough to make good progress, and it gets you further than one long session a week. A good order is to start with the daily review, carry on with a unit or a lesson and finish by saying phrases out loud. Quizzes are as long as you choose, and if you close one halfway, the home screen offers it to you when you come back.
Do you learn vocabulary, or just grammar?
Both. There is a vocabulary section of its own, by topic, word class and level, with readings, usage notes and a quiz in both directions, as well as the common phrases and those in each lesson. And «True or false», a card game that asks about the meaning of words and phrases and about ideas from grammar, pronunciation and culture.
What happens if I get a lot wrong?
Nothing bad: there are no lives and no penalties. When you get one wrong, the quiz stops and explains the reason for the answer. A unit counts as completed with 80% in its mini-quiz, and it can be retaken as many times as needed with other questions drawn at random. Whatever you finish goes into the review whether you passed it or not, because what trips you up is exactly what is most worth reviewing.
Do I have to follow the order, or can I skip ahead?
You can skip ahead. The levels give order and measure progress, but they lock nothing: any unit, lesson, era or listing opens whenever you want. The suggested order is that of the levels, from N5 upwards, because each unit assumes what came before; if you already know some, the search boxes and filters take you straight to what you are missing.
Shall we start?
You sign in with an email and a password, or with your Google account. A minute later you are in the first unit.
Enter Hanasuka