Visual mnemonics for every character
Every character comes with a memory hook that ties the shape to the sound. The kind of trick language schools charge hundreds for — built into every card, free.
SimplyHiragana. Read Japanese.
Forty-six characters. That's all hiragana is. Not hundreds. Not thousands. Forty-six — and most people learn them in about two weeks. If you've been putting off starting Japanese because it feels overwhelming, this is where that changes. SimplyHiragana teaches every character with visual mnemonics and spaced repetition. It's completely free.
iPhone · iPad · Android coming soon
One character at a time. A visual hint to make it stick. That's the whole idea.
Sound familiar?
These are real posts from beginners. The overwhelm is normal. The fix is simpler than you think.
Experience
Three steps. Forty-six characters.
No textbooks. No classes. No complicated apps with fifty features you'll never use. Just the characters, the hints, and you.
1. Open
No accounts. No login. Tap Start.
2. See
Each character comes with a visual mnemonic — a hint that ties the shape to the sound.
3. Recall
Try to remember before you tap. That struggle is how the characters move from short-term to long-term memory.
Five minutes between other things
Waiting for coffee. Riding the bus. Lying in bed before sleep. The app is built for the gaps in your day, not a dedicated study hour.
Free. Forever.
Start studying now.
The Science
Why retrieval beats review.
Hiragana characters share similar shapes — ぬ and め, き and さ — and recognizing them on a chart is not the same as recalling them from memory. Cognitive psychologists Craik and Lockhart established in 1972 that the act of retrieving information produces far stronger encoding than re-reading it. SimplyHiragana is built around that principle: see the card, try to recall, then tap.
Spaced repetition handles the timing. Characters you struggle with come back sooner. Characters you've locked in come back less. The system adapts to you.
Built Right
How it's built.
- Your progress stays on your device. No server. No account. No trackers. Everything lives locally.
- Accessibility is not optional. VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, and reduced motion preferences all work as they should.
- Free means free. Start studying now.
Our Story
Why hiragana is free.
When I built SimplyKanji, I realized something: most people who want to learn kanji can't read hiragana yet. And every app that tries to teach both at once ends up overwhelming beginners before they've even started. Hiragana should be its own thing — a clear, simple first step. And it should be free, because charging someone to start learning Japanese is wrong.
SimplyHiragana exists so you can get the foundation right before anything else. Forty-six characters, two weeks, zero cost. After that, the rest of Japanese opens up.
The Simply Learning Ecosystem
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Available on iPhone and iPad
Take the first step toward reading Japanese.
Free forever. Study on your iPhone on the go, your iPad at home. Same progress, any device.
Android coming soon.
Download on the App Store