Practicing the Kana

After having gone through the Real Kana, and have done both the Hiragana Timer and the Katakana timer while sittin in front of my computer, I wanted more practice while I was away from the computer.  I wanted to practice the kana where ever I was, even if it was for a minute or two.  For this, you really cant beat the convenience of an iPhone.  There are a ton of Kana learning softwares mostly you will want the ones with the flash card ability.  Really nice Kana sets will have some audio with them as mine did.


At the time these apps were .99 cent apps, now they have all kinds of bells and whistles for 2.99.  Bells and whistles that I never use.  Thus the app is a bit overpriced in my opinion.  What you really want is something that tells you in romaji - romanized japanese script with american letters, what each kana is the rough equivalent to in english.  If you have done the Real Kana and the timers then this will not be foreign to you.  Really you just want a way of checking to see if you are correct and moving onto the next one.  And it would be nice to have some audio pronunciation of each character, and you are set.


I am sure there are many other ways to learn the Kana, Im just telling you what I did.  So its best that you do a bit of research and find whats best for you.  So I used a handy iphone app called HikaChan for both Hiragana and Katakana.  It comes with pictures and the stroke order and a chance to write out the kana on your phone.  Yeah, cool features, But at this point writing Japanese was towards the bottom of my list, and back then speaking it was at the bottom of my list as well.  I was quite busy with many other things so I wanted to focus on what I thought would help me pick up the language the quickest.


Using these two apps, I would sit on the crapper or sit at my internship, and whip out the phone for a minute or two to do the flash cards that they had, I would randomize it, and it would be multiple choice, and I would try to get to 100 flash cards without a mistake.  When I was about to pass out, then I would listen to the pronounciations of each character.  But really, I spent alot of time using the flash card multiple choice to get in 100 cards while on the crapper or while at the intership.  It was great for that.  I havent tried any other program but I think the best thing to do is to get an app that has some kind of Kana flash card system, and +1 if it comes with sound.  To find out more about Hika Chan, check the link for the Hiragana and here for the Katakana


And by this Point, I had started up Rosetta Stone.  In my next post, I will talk about the Complete Rosetta Stone Japanese Package All 3 levels, my technique and Overall review of the software.  In one sentence, I think its a Great intro to the Language, is it worth 500 Bucks?  Not too sure about that  I also noticed that Real Kana now has an iPhone app, not sure if they had one while I was using there site, but I would give it a peek for those looking to master the Kana