概要 About

You want to read Japanese one day. So did I.

In June 2025 I went to Japan from Australia and loved it. I promised myself that one day I would read Japanese.

I learned the two alphabets. Then I hit the wall: kanji, the thousands of characters that carry the meaning.

The courses I found were good, but they taught kanji, not reading. So I built the one I wanted. I am its first learner.

Begin lesson 1. Start free, no account needed.

日hi · sun, dayThe sun, squared by the chisel; the bar keeps it from being empty.

Why this one?

Most learners juggle three things: a kanji app, flashcards, and a book that turns out to be too hard.

Kotoba is the three in one. It knows which kanji you know, so the book is never too hard.

一one

A picture story with every lesson

Written in the kanji you have learned. A new one carries its kana above it. Every line plays in its character's voice.

They follow Sam, an Australian lodger, and the family he lives with.

サムSam
The lodger upstairs. He knows as much Japanese as you do.
Wants to read one whole sign without his phone.
メイMei
Seven. Counts everything out loud.
Wants a cat.
おばあちゃんGrandma
The house is hers.
Wants to hear Sam read one newspaper headline aloud by spring.
お父さんDad
Cooks on Sundays.
Wants a Sunday on the river with a rod.
お母さんMum
Drives the grocery van up the valley.
Wants one quiet hour with a book.
コロKoro
Sleeps by the door.
Wants whatever is in the bag.

Press a face.

In a sunny kitchen, a person in glasses stands behind the table holding an orange box of curry roux high overhead, a child jumps beside them with both fists in the air, and a tall young person in a knitted hat looks at the box while scratching the back of the head.

「今日はカレーだ。」
Today it is curry.
「わあ！カレー、大好き！」
Yay! I love curry!
「サムは、カレー、好き？」
Sam, do you like curry?
「好きです。でも、日本のカレーは初めてです。」
I do. But Japanese curry is a first for me.

2 / 16

4 of 16 pages

日曜日のカレー · Sunday Curry · lesson 29. Press a face to hear its line, a word to see its lesson.

二two

Kanji you can work out

Each kanji arrives inside a real word, with a painting and the true story of its shape.

Lesson 21 · At the station

えき

駅

A small wooden railway station with a lit sign over its doors and long platform roofs on both sides.

train station

A saddled horse stands waiting. A rider with a bag over one shoulder is seen from behind.

The station kept fresh horses ready long before it kept trains.

A horse stands at the left: head and mane above, the body, and the legs, now four dots. The whole named the relay post where a rider changed to a fresh horse.

When the railway came, the word moved from the post to the railway station. The horses are gone; the trains halt at 駅.

A few more.

Press a painting to see its kanji.

家ie · houseLesson 7
Under the roof, not a person but a pig.
間aida · betweenLesson 3
Moonlight in the crack of a gate shut after dark.
電電車 densha · trainLesson 21
Before it ran through wires, this was lightning in a storm.
買買う kau · to buyLesson 20
A net over a shell, and shells were money before coins.
好好き suki · likedLesson 29
Liking, drawn as a kneeling woman with a child at her side.
北kita · northLesson 26
Face the midday sun, and north is at your back.
友友達 tomodachi · friendLesson 14
Two right hands reaching the same way: help, and so a friend.
忘忘れる wasureru · to forgetLesson 22
Forgetting is a thing that has gone from the heart.

Real histories, each checked against four reference works. Where scholars disagree, the page says so.

It asks before it tells.

A person stands with both arms stretched wide, a small child beside them. — 大big

A traveller in a straw hat walks past a gate, seen from the side. — 人person

Lesson 12

大人

You know 大 from 大きい, big, and 人, person.

Together they are said as one word.

What does this word mean?

三three

Six kinds of exercise

Pick the right kanji. Choose how a word is said. Build a word. Order a sentence. Match opposites. Answer by ear.

Try two.

Lesson 12

Which kanji?

Choose the kanji for the marked word.

うちの犬はしろいです。

Our dog is white.

Lesson 7

Which word do you hear?

Listen, then choose the word you heard.

四four

It remembers what you forget

Each word comes back on its own date: 3 lessons later, then 8, 20, 50. Miss it, and it is back next lesson.

a new word 3 8 20 50 lessons

Every word becomes a flashcard in My words.

Press a card.

五five

A verse to keep

Each lesson closes on a verse you can now read. You keep them in My verses.

This one closes lesson 1.

You can already read its middle line. 一, 二, 三 and 四 have been numbering this page.

Waiting for the bus.

One, two, three, four.

Taxi, then.

バスを待つ

一、二、三、四

タクシーで

Ten smooth stones laid out in two rows of five, the first one orange.

始めるBegin lesson 1

No account.

The plain facts

A lesson: Eight new kanji.
The order: The words people say most come first.
Where it is going: About 500 lessons and 1,700 kanji. New lessons are added regularly.
What you need: Hiragana, katakana, beginner grammar and a computer.
The price: Start free, no account needed.

252kanji
324words
1,481paintings
2,291recordings

謝辞 Credits

The recipe

Serves: Anyone who wants to read Japanese
Time: About 2,000 hours

材料Ingredients

100,000Japanese YouTube videos, all 160 million of their words countedTUBELEX · Nara Institute of Science and Technology
2dictionaries, for every readingKANJIDIC2 · JMdict
4reference works, for the true story of each kanjiKanjipedia · Chinese University of Hong Kong · Wiktionary in English and Japanese
1set of stroke drawings, one for every kanjiKanjiVG
2tools that cut sentences into words, and readings into kanjiSudachi · JmdictFurigana
3AI models: one to write, one to paint, one to speakClaude · GPT Image · Gemini
1curious amateur, asking questionsThe cook

作り方Method

Sort the words by how often people say them. Begin at the top.
Find the true story of each kanji. Check it against all four reference works. Say where the scholars disagree.
Write. Paint. Record.
Taste before serving: thirteen checks, every screen opened, every recording heard. One recording called the dog Kokoro. His name is Koro. It went back.

The cook

I am an amateur, so I do not decide what is taught. I bring curiosity and a love of learning: I ask the questions, and the answers come back.

Sources and licences

Which words are most common was measured with TUBELEX, a word count of Japanese YouTube subtitles by Adam Nohejl and colleagues at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology ("Beyond Film Subtitles: Is YouTube the Best Approximation of Spoken Vocabulary?", 2025; BSD 3-Clause licence).
Kanji readings and dictionary facts come from KANJIDIC2 and JMdict, © the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, used under the Group's licence (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0).
Each kanji's history was checked against Kanjipedia, the Multi-function Chinese Character Database of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the English and Japanese editions of Wiktionary.
The stroke drawings of the kanji are KanjiVG, © Ulrich Apel, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 licence.
How a word's reading divides over its kanji comes from JmdictFurigana, by Doublevil, under JMdict's licence.
Word forms and readings were worked out with Sudachi and SudachiDict, © Works Applications Co., Ltd. (Apache License 2.0).
The models. The lessons are written with Claude Fable 5.2, by Anthropic. The pictures are painted with OpenAI's GPT Image models. The voices are Google's Gemini speech models, and models from OpenAI and Google listen to the recordings.
The typefaces are Klee One, Noto Sans JP, Noto Serif JP, Inter and Literata, each under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. A few rare kanji parts are drawn with Plangothic, under the same licence.
The lessons, sentences, stories, pictures and recordings are Kotoba's own. The kanji readings in the course are built from KANJIDIC2 and are offered under the same licence. The stroke drawings are KanjiVG's files, unchanged.

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Last updated 11 November 2026