Kana no Mado

Kana no Mado is a really simple educational game, but I actually like how focused it is. Instead of trying to teach me everything about Japanese at once, it concentrates specifically on recognizing and reading hiragana and katakana. I found that approach refreshing because there is very little unnecessary material getting in the way of the actual learning. The lessons introduce the kana with sound and visual examples, then let me practice recognizing what I am seeing. I can work through the basic hiragana and katakana lessons at my own pace, and the instant feedback makes it easy to notice when I have confused similar looking characters. I liked the relaxed structure because it feels more like steady practice than a test. The quizzes are probably the most useful part for me. There are separate practice modes for hiragana and katakana, along with a listening quiz that makes me connect the sounds with the written characters. That gives the free version more value than simply presenting a list of letters. I also like that the characters can be shown in different fonts, since real Japanese does not always look exactly like the clean characters used in textbooks. The presentation is …