Kana Challenge

How Kana Challenge works

Kana Challenge is a hiragana and katakana app for complete beginners. It teaches both scripts in 30 days with a daily lesson, a quiz, stroke-order writing and a timed game. This page explains each part and how the course decides what you see again.

Last reviewed 1 November 2026 · By the My Senpai team

The 30-day plan

Each day brings five new characters. You finish a lesson by reaching 50 correct answers in its quiz, and days 7, 14, 21 and 30 are review days. You do not plan anything: the home screen shows today's lesson, your streak and what comes next.

What day 1, day 10 and day 30 look like

• Day 1: the five vowels, あいうえお. You watch each one drawn, hear it, take the quiz until you reach 50 correct, and say a few words aloud.
• Day 10: week two, where the M, Y, R and W columns, voiced sounds such as が, P sounds and combinations finish off hiragana. The day still has the same shape: five new characters, the quiz, the words.
• Day 30: the final review of both scripts, after a last week of speed drills. By then you have met all 46 hiragana and 46 katakana, the voiced sounds and the combinations, and more than 130 everyday words.

Each day ends with speaking practice: you say the day's words, and the app shows a percent match and what it heard you say, with a breakdown by syllable. There are two voices, male and female, with an 80% speed option.

Already know some kana? A test-out quiz of 50 correct answers starts you at the first character you cannot read, and all earlier days count as done. No ad plays before the test.

Quiz modes

Every lesson ends with a quiz that runs until you reach 50 correct answers. The characters you miss come back more often, so the quiz spends its time on your weak spots.

• Standard questions: a prompt and a set of answer choices.
• Audio first: hear the kana and pick the character.
• Speed drills in the final week.
• Test-out: the same 50-correct quiz, used to skip ahead.

To try the idea without installing anything, the free kana quiz in your browser asks 20 questions a round and lists your misses at the end.

Write mode and stroke grading

Open any character on the kana charts and choose one of three tabs:

• Watch: the animated stroke order, with the start of each stroke numbered, and Replay, Step and Slow controls.
• Trace (beta): follow a faint guide with a red start dot. Each stroke is graded when you lift your finger: backwards, too short or off the line, the app says so. After three misses on one stroke it shows the correct stroke.
• Write: draw the character from memory. Each stroke is marked right, wrong order or wrong, and the app tells look-alikes such as シ and ツ apart. You get a score and a Great, Good or Try again verdict.

Offline, Watch stays free while Trace and Write need the ad-free upgrade. For every hiragana row animated on one page, see hiragana stroke order, row by row. Stroke data comes from KanjiVG (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Tower of Terror (beta)

The Tower of Terror is a timed writing game. It unlocks once you have tried Day 1 and is still marked beta.

• Two towers, hiragana and katakana, each with four worlds of 10 levels: 80 levels in all.
• Each level asks 20 questions, 10 new kana and 10 review. You see the sound and write the kana before the timer runs out.
• You have 3 lives and can earn up to 3 stars. A wrong shape, a missing stroke or a timeout costs a life; a wrong stroke order still passes.
• A guardian ends each world, and speed levels shorten the timer. After a miss, the correct stroke order plays before the next question.

How review is scheduled

Kana Challenge reviews in three places, each one tied to what you have already met:

• Inside each quiz: characters you answer wrongly come back more often until you reach 50 correct.
• Review days: days 7, 14, 21 and 30 replace new characters with a review of everything so far.
• In the Tower: half of every level, 10 of the 20 questions, is review of kana from earlier levels.

Your streak and optional reminders bring you back the next day. Reminders are offered after your first day, not at launch.

Free or ad-free

The whole course is free online with ads: all 30 lessons and reviews, hiragana and katakana practice, audio and speaking scores, and the charts, in 12 interface languages. A one-time ad-free purchase removes the ads and adds full offline access to the lessons and charts. It is not a subscription.