Himari: Hiragana & Katakana

Himari: Hiragana & Katakana is an app for complete beginners who want to learn Japanese. It starts from the very first letter of the hiragana alphabet and guides you through reading and typing in Japanese.

The app opens with an animated film and features 17 original music tracks. All pictures, scenes, manga pages and music were created specifically for this app.

Meet Your Teachers and Companion

Himari and Sora are two teachers who have just graduated, and you are their first student. At the start, you pick one of them to guide you. Your chosen teacher stays with you for the entire course and reacts to each of your answers.

After each session, a fox named Kon walks home with you. Kon grows as you learn more kana, learns tricks that he performs by himself, and gets a second tail at the end of the course. You can visit Kon's dedicated page to see his growth and replay the tricks he has learned.

How Lessons Work

There is almost no English in the lessons. Instead, each word is taught using a picture and a recorded Japanese voice. To answer, you type directly in kana.

The app encourages you to practice using your phone's Japanese keyboard, specifically the 12-key kana flick layout used on phones in Japan. If you keep typing in romaji, the app will pause and show step-by-step instructions for adding the Japanese keyboard to your phone, which takes about a minute. However, romaji answers are still accepted and converted to kana.

Courses Included

• Hiragana Course (Free)

This course covers all 46 hiragana across 10 chapters, introducing 5 new words per chapter. Each chapter takes place in a different setting, such as a classroom, a convenience store at night, or cherry blossom viewing. At the end of every chapter, you unlock a manga page and stamp a seal.

• Kanji Course (Free)

This course opens after you finish the hiragana course. It contains 38 entries and shows the kanji for words you already learned in hiragana (for example, ねこ becomes 猫). This course focuses on reading only; you do not have to write kanji from memory.

• Katakana Course

Ready for katakana? This is a separate course featuring its own city, story, and two guides named Rin and Hiro. You can start it at any time. Chapter 1 is free, and the rest of the course is unlocked with a single one-time purchase. There are no subscriptions, no ads, and no other purchases.

Smart Spaced Repetition Review

To help you remember what you study, the app uses spaced repetition, bringing back each kana and word for review shortly before you would forget it. If you return after a long break, you will not face a large backlog. Instead, the app gives you one review session of a manageable size and moves the remaining items to later days.

Complete Privacy and Offline Use

Every beginner can study anywhere, because the app works fully offline. • No account, no login, and no server • No analytics, no tracking, and no identifiers of any kind • No ads and no third-party SDKs • Your progress is saved in one file directly on your device and can be exported whenever you like.