The 10 best Japanese Anki decks (2027)

Number 1 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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Number 8 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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Number 4 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

Get it on AnkiWeb (free shared deck)

Number 2 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

Get it on AnkiWeb (free shared deck)

vocabulary list · A1-C1 · 9,279 notes · no audio · updated October 2026

A 9,279-card companion to the Kanji in Context textbook that is accurate and well ordered for that book, but it is bare words with no sentences, audio or images, so it only makes sense if you own the textbook.

Verdict

The deck does one thing well: it follows the book's order of Stage, then KC level, then lesson, introducing one kanji at a time and building compounds on kanji already seen. Cards open with 一分, 一人, 一つ and move through the numbers, and the sampled readings and glosses were correct, including irregular ones like 二十日[はつか] and 七日[なのか]. The weaknesses are structural. Every card is a single word or compound (99% of the deck, with only 62 sentences), so you never see a word used in context or learn any grammar. Nothing is audible or visual. The order also follows the book instead of frequency: 71% of the top 1,000 words are taught, and common words like こと, できる, 話 and 気 never appear. The later parts are almost entirely words past rank 5,000, such as 謁する, 冶金 and 出藍の誉れ.

Use it if you are working through Kanji in Context, or a similar kanji-first course, and want a reading-and-meaning drill that matches the book lesson by lesson. Do not use it as a general vocabulary deck or as your main route to speaking or listening. It is a poor fit for beginners without the textbook, because the cards have no explanation beyond a short English gloss. The ordering is also a kanji-learning order, not a difficulty or usefulness order, so the cards do not get steadily harder in a way you can rely on.

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Number 7 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · A1-B2 · 1,988 notes · audio on 100% · updated June 2016

A 1,988-word vocabulary list drawn from visual novels, ordered by frequency, with audio on every note, no sentence practice and no grammar teaching; worth studying only as a word-list supplement.

Verdict

The deck does one thing well: it gives you a clean, frequency-ordered run of single words from VN text, each with furigana, a short English gloss and audio on all 1,988 notes (presence only; I can't judge quality). The opening is the words you actually meet first (ない, する, いる, 俺, ある, なる, 言う), and entries are mostly accurate. It does badly at everything beyond word-to-meaning. In the sample only a few cards, like この and ない, carry a short example phrase. Only 2 of 1,970 measured notes are sentences, so you learn no word in a sentence. The author left out the grammar words, so は, を, ます, たい and など are among the most common words on the general list that the deck never teaches. Coverage of the general top 1,000 is 64%. Because the list follows VN frequency, rare story vocabulary appears early, such as 駐在 at 7% of the deck and 牢獄 at 22%, while ranks 501-1,000 are only 56% covered. The 歳 card gives meanings that belong to 才, and the sampled content includes explicit and vulgar words (射精, 野郎).

Use it if you already have a grammar source and want a recognition-vocabulary deck for reading visual novels, anime or manga, and you are fine learning words in isolation. Skip it if you want to learn from sentences, need grammar sequenced for you, or want a general-purpose frequency deck. Despite the A1-B2 label, the deck is isolated words, not a path to B2.

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grammar point deck with example sentences · JLPT N4-N1 in the sample, plus an 'N0' tier above N1; N5 may also be present · 827 notes · no audio · updated September 2025

A thorough Japanese grammar reference with 8 to 25 example sentences per pattern and Chinese and English glosses, but the default order starts at the hardest tier and ends with N5, so it is not worth studying as shipped unless you reorder it.

Verdict

The strength is the entry itself. Each note gives the connection rules, a Chinese gloss, Japanese and Chinese explanations, and many parallel examples. N5 ～ながら, for example, has eight example sentences, each with a Chinese and an English translation. The sentences are mostly natural, spoken-style Japanese, and the usage notes are specific (for example, ～ありき is rare, and 「やる」 is a blunt verb for animals and plants). The weaknesses are order and polish. The deck opens with N0 patterns like ～あぐねる, ～ありき and ぶち～, and the N5 notes come last. In 100% of cross-level pairs the higher level comes first. The sample also shows reversed or weak translations, some shock-value content, and no audio at all (0 of 827 notes). Many sentences are long for their level. On my reading this is a hand-corrected, AI-assisted translation layer rather than clean parallel text, so check the English before trusting it.

Use it if you already read Japanese at roughly N4 or above, can read the Japanese explanations or the Chinese ones, and want a grammar dictionary you can drill by sentence. Do not use it as a beginner course in the order it ships. Someone who needs audio or who learns best from graded, connected material will be poorly served, because the sentences are standalone and nothing builds across notes.

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mixed · A1-A2 · 1,478 notes · audio on 100% · updated February 2016

A kana-only companion deck to Human Japanese chapters 6-44, with audio on every note and short, natural sentences, but it only works if you re-sequence it and study it next to the book.

Verdict

The sentences are the strength. In the sample they are short, natural, textbook-style lines such as まりこさんは　アメリカで　えいごを　べんきょう　して　います and どの　みせが　すき　ですか, and 90% of the sentences add at most one new word. The glosses I checked were correct. All 1,478 notes carry audio, though I can't judge its quality. The weakness is order. Within a chapter, words come first and then sentences that reuse them. Across the deck, the stored order runs roughly backward through the book. A few C06 greeting cards open the deck, then it jumps to C44 weather verbs like あめが　ふって　います. By note #370 you are in C35 adjectives, and the deck ends on C06 greetings. Nothing on the cards explains grammar, and about half the notes are bare words or fragments. The 688-word vocabulary follows the book's topics, not frequency, so it reaches only 138 of the top 1,000 Japanese words. The list of missing common words is partly inflated because the deck is written only in kana, which means 日本 and 私 can't match.

Use this if you own Human Japanese and want sound-backed review cards that track its chapters, and you are willing to study one chapter at a time by tag. Skip it if you don't have the book, because the cards give you no grammar and no dialogue context. Also skip it if you want kanji, a frequency-based core vocabulary, or a first deck you can study in its default order.

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mixed · A1 · 908 notes · no audio · updated June 2017

Part 1 of a 4-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A vocabulary companion to the Japanese From Zero 1 textbook, worth studying only if you own the book and accept silent word cards, because there is no audio, no images and almost no sentences.

Verdict

The deck's strength is that it follows the book's lesson order and splits each lesson into subdecks (New Words, New Phrases, Word Practice, Verbal Gym sets), so you can study only what you've covered. Romaji is replaced by kana as the book introduces each letter, and that gives a real build, for example 'すmimaせn.' and 'Nihonご de nan deすか。'. The sampled translations and counter readings are correct, such as 'ろっぷん' for 6 minutes. The weak points are structural. Only 7% of notes are sentences of four or more words, so the deck teaches words and a few phrase frames like '... sai desu.' rather than usable Japanese. Many cards are kana-writing practice ('かい' = shell, 'まね' = imitation, 'かいろ' = heat pad) rather than words a beginner needs. In the sample, the deck covers only 10% of the top 1,000 Japanese words. That figure is understated, because words written as mixed romaji and kana, like 'waたし', don't match the frequency list. There is no audio and no images, and the cards carry no grammar explanation.

Use it if you are working through JFZ! 1 and want a section-by-section recall drill for the book's word lists. The book supplies the explanations, pronunciation and example sentences that the cards leave out. Don't use it as a standalone course, and don't use it if you want to learn how Japanese is actually written. Strings like 'おjamaしmasu。' and 'こんshuう' mirror a point in the book's kana sequence and would teach you odd spellings if you study them without the book. If you want conversational Japanese or listening practice, you will have to supply that elsewhere.

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vocabulary list · N5-N1 · 7,734 notes · no audio · updated August 2026

A 7,734-note JLPT vocabulary deck (N5 to N1) with an example sentence on most cards, worth using only if you reorder it first, since the default order starts at N1 and it has no audio.

Verdict

The deck is broad and well laid out. It covers 96% of the 1,000 most common Japanese words on the frequency list and 93% of the top 2,000, and nearly all of that core arrives in the first quarter of the N5 path. Each card gives a clear gloss, a grammar label and a Tatoeba-style sentence pair, and the layout is tidy: furigana hidden until you click, the meaning large, extra senses small underneath. The defaults are the weak point. Opening the outer deck starts you at 大空, 化繊 and 檻 (all N1), and 私 and 年 are the last two cards. The sentences are not matched to your level either. 差す, an N5 card, comes with a 16-word sentence in which 13 words are new, and even along the N5-first tag path only 27% of sentences in the opening tenth add one new word or fewer. There is no audio and no grammar sequence. Some example pairs do not fit the card, for example 旅券 with a translation about saving travel expenses, 着る illustrated by きせられた (the verb 着せる), and 下 illustrated by Dante and Milton. About 1,000 notes have no sentence at all.

Use it as a JLPT word reference or a supplement to a course you already follow, once you have set it to start at N5 and added your own audio. It suits someone who can already read kana, tolerates dense glosses, and is working toward a JLPT level. Do not use it as your only resource if you are a true beginner who needs sentences built from words you have already met, if you want listening and speaking practice, or if you need current colloquial vocabulary. It also will not teach grammar in any order.

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vocabulary list · A2-B1 · 589 notes · audio on 100% · updated June 2023

Part 2 of a 2-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A clean, lesson-by-lesson vocabulary list for the Genki 2 textbook (L13-L23) with audio on every note, worth studying only as a companion to the book and not as a standalone course.

Verdict

The deck does one job well: it gives you the Genki 2 word lists in textbook order, with a recording on all 589 notes and two cards per note (Japanese to English, English to Japanese). The sampled cards are mostly accurate, and the notes carry kanji meanings and particle hints such as 'to reserve(〜を)' and 'to participate(~に)'. It has no example sentences, so every card is a bare word or short phrase. That means no sentence-level i+1 progression, no grammar practice, and nothing showing how a word behaves in use. The coverage of the top 1,000 words is low (121 of 1,000), but that mostly reflects Genki 1 words like 人, 私 and 何 living in the companion deck. Some cards carry stray notes in the kanji field, for example 'ソロソロ(hiragana is more common)', and the same text is repeated in the kanji-meaning field. One kanji looks wrong in the sample: ぞう is glossed 'elephant' but written 像, which means 'statue'. Audio is counted, not heard, so play a few cards before trusting it.

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vocabulary list · A1-A2 · 1,076 notes · audio on 74% · updated June 2023

Part 1 of a 2-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A bare-bones Genki 1 vocabulary list (lessons 0 to 12) that is worth using only as a companion to the textbook, not as a way to learn Japanese on its own.

Verdict

The deck follows the textbook's order closely. It starts with greetings and numbers, then groups each lesson's words by theme, with subdecks such as Days Month, Foods and Bodyparts. Every note makes two cards, Japanese to English and English to Japanese, and most have audio (74% of notes). Almost everything is a single word or short phrase, though, and the sample has no example sentences: 91% of notes are one-word or short-phrase cards, and the cards show no word in use. Grammar appears only as tags like Ru-verbs and hints like 'to wait (〜を)'. Frequency is not what drives the selection. Late lessons add specialist items such as 'orthopedic surgeon' and 'intravenous feeding', and those same final-lesson cards have no audio in the sample. The card back is cluttered: the kanji is printed twice, and the reverse card labels the Japanese answer 'Meaning:'. The readings and glosses I checked looked correct, apart from one typo ('obsterician').

Use this if you are working through Genki 1 and want ready-made flashcards that match each chapter, with kana as the main answer and kanji as a secondary hint. It suits a learner who gets grammar and example sentences from the book or a class and only needs the word drilling. Do not rely on it as your only source, and skip it if you want to learn words inside sentences or study the most common Japanese words first. The frequency figures for this deck undercount somewhat, because kana-only entries such as わたし do not match the list's 私 entries. The deck's order still comes from the textbook, not from frequency.

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vocabulary list · A1-A2 (JLPT N5) · 654 notes · audio on 100% · updated June 2015

A 654-card JLPT N5 headword list with audio on nearly every card, but its dictionary-scraped example sentences make it a weak deck to study from as-is.

Verdict

The headword set is the right target for N5, and the short English gloss is clean: 火曜日 is 'Tuesday', 乗る is 'to take, to ride'. Audio is attached to 651 of 654 notes, and each note makes one card, so the daily load is predictable. The example sentences are the problem. They look lifted from a large English-Japanese dictionary, and in the sample they are often poor teaching material. 一人 gets 涙を流さなかった者はひとりとしていなかった, which is 10 new words out of 12. する gets a sentence about avoiding human relationships on a computer. 使う gets a bare fragment, …を使って。 Others are broken. 大勢 shows 大勢[たいせい]で, a different reading from the headword. 日 is paired with 'two or three days' for 23日. The rare words in those sentences (綿毛 on 軽い, 右前 on 右) are not part of N5. The deck has no grammar sequence, and the ordering follows no clear difficulty or frequency path, so the sample shows a loose pile of cards rather than a course.

Use it if you already have a textbook or course for grammar and just need an N5 word list with recordings to drill reading and listening. It suits a learner who will ignore the example sentences or replace them. Skip it if you want sentences you can read and learn from, a built-in grammar progression, or a deck that tests you on producing the word. The template shows reading and kanji together on the front, so it never asks you to recall anything.

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mixed · A1-B2 · 3,992 notes · audio on 100% · updated November 2016

A large, audio-and-image-backed Japanese vocabulary deck that pairs each word with one short, natural sentence; it is worth studying if you already know basic Japanese, but it makes a poor starting point for a true beginner.

Verdict

The deck does well where it counts most for a vocabulary builder. Every word gets a vocabulary note and a matching sentence, such as 池に鯉がいます ("There are carp in the pond") and 私は待つのが嫌だ ("I hate waiting"). The sentences are short (about 4 words on average) and everyday, and 87% add at most one new word. The sample showed no wrong readings or mistranslations, and the measurements show audio and an image on nearly every note. It does badly on ordering and coverage. The first 30 notes are formal nouns (主張, 年度, 産業, 加工), and the first sentence, 上司は私の主張を受け入れた, introduces 7 new words by itself. Common function words (や, って, けど, という, とか) are never taught, and the deck covers only 70% of the 1,000 most frequent words. It also has no grammar teaching, and the sentences do not connect to one another. In the sample, plain words like 車 and 最初 turn up in the last few notes, and the final tenth has no sentences at all.

Use it if you already read kana, know basic grammar from a textbook or course, and want to grow a vocabulary of about 2,000 words with audio, pictures, and one sentence per word. It suits a learner who treats it as a supplement and has the patience to review three cards per note (about 12,000 cards in total). Skip it if you are starting from zero, if you want a deck that teaches grammar or follows a coherent course, or if you want the most frequent words first and the function words that hold sentences together. This deck will not give you those.

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grammar pattern reference deck with example sentences · N4-N1 · 632 notes · audio on 100% · updated April 2026

A detailed grammar-pattern reference with natural example sentences, audio on every note, and usage warnings, but it opens at N1 and ends at N5, and its sentence translations are Chinese and Korean rather than English.

Verdict

The strength is the explanation and sample sentences. In the sample, each pattern comes with 3 to 11 sentences written to show that one pattern. Many are short A/B dialogues, such as 「Ａ：今、いちばん«ほしい»ものは何ですか。」 under がほしい. Cards add a connection formula (「Ｖます＋ながら」), a formal or written-form flag, and ❌/✅ contrast examples that mark limits, such as ながら 「すわりながら本を読んだ」 against 「すわって本を読んだ」. Audio is present on all 632 notes. The weaknesses are structural. In the default order every N1 note comes before every N2, N3, N4 and N5 note. The first ten cards you meet are あっての, いかんで, いかんでは, いかんにかかわらず and similar literary patterns, and 「ている」 and 「てください」 arrive last. The Chinese and Korean fields have visible errors. Sentence translations are in Chinese only (CN and CHT fields), so an English-only learner gets no sentence translations. The sample also shows typos and truncations: 「ことに（は）」 has a Chinese note cut off at 「把这个感想放在。」, 暍 appears for 喝, and 教窒 for 教室.

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Number 5 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

Get it on AnkiWeb (free shared deck)

Number 6 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

Get it on AnkiWeb (free shared deck)

Number 3 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

Get it on AnkiWeb (free shared deck)

vocabulary list with example sentences · A1-B2 · 2,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated June 2017

Part 1 of a 3-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 2,000-card Japanese vocabulary deck with an example sentence and audio on every card, worth studying if you fix the card order and templates first and don't need grammar teaching.

Verdict

The strengths are the sentences and the audio. In the sample the examples are short, natural everyday Japanese that use the headword in a typical collocation, such as 冷たい飲み物をください and 彼は医者になりました. Every note has sentence audio (2,000 of 2,000), and the translations and glosses I read were correct. The deck teaches 96 of the 100 most common Japanese words on the frequency list. The weakness is progression. Only 49% of sentences add at most one new word, and in the first 200 notes it is 27%. Early cards often carry four to seven unfamiliar words, for example 九 (7 of 7 words new), 千 (5 of 5) and 十 (6 of 9). The study order also clusters by kanji family rather than by usefulness: five 冷 or 割 items run back to back with ビデオテープ and バイト dropped into the runs, and the opening is a block of numbers and day-of-month words. The vocabulary then drifts rare, so 69% of the new words in the last tenth rank past 5,000 (テープレコーダー, ラッシュアワー, 五十音). The deck also has no grammar explanation at all. The last 15 notes carry Optimized-Voc-Index 3 to 20 (一, 二, 三, これ, なる) and look like the true first cards, misplaced at the end.

Use this deck if you already read kana and know basic grammar, and you want sentence-based vocabulary reps with audio on every card. It suits you if you are at roughly A2 or above and happy to guess at unknown words in a sentence. It is a poor fit if you are a true beginner who needs a guided path, if you want grammar built up step by step, or if you want a complete, strictly frequency-ordered core list. This file is only Part 01 of a larger set. Its source index numbers jump from about 1,400 at card 500 to about 2,980 at card 1,000 and about 4,570 at card 1,500, so it is a slice, not a contiguous band.

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phrase book · A1-B1 · 2,059 notes · audio on 100% · updated July 2024

A 2,059-note companion to the Pimsleur Japanese course with audio on every note; worth studying only if you are also doing the lessons, because the cards teach words and phrases but little grammar.

Verdict

The deck is steady and accurate. Every note has a recording, and the order follows the course: the first lesson gives you です, はい, いいえ, わかりません, and later lessons add time, money, and travel. In sentences, 89% add at most one new word, and the new-word rate settles at 10-13% after the opening. The Bonus Pack sentences are natural, with polite and casual pairs such as もう少しいられるといいんですが and もう少しいられるといいんだけど. The weak side is the format. 69% of notes are single words or short chunks like 長い, 三年, or 蓋, with no example sentence, no grammar note, and no lesson text. Vocabulary follows Pimsleur's situations instead of frequency: 87 of the top 100 words are taught, but only 48% of the top 1,000 and 35% of the top 2,000. Later lessons lean on niche items such as 炊飯器, タイ焼き, and アメリカ大使館. The Japanese and romaji share one field in one style, and romaji spellings vary (arigato and jozu next to kyootsuu and syokugyoo). One sampled note (#284) shows garbled characters instead of Japanese.

Use this if you are working through the Pimsleur audio lessons and want spaced-repetition review of each lesson's vocabulary, or if you want a travel and daily-situation phrase set with sound on every card. It suits true beginners best, since the opening is carefully paced. The stated A1-B1 range is not supported by the sample: the later cards are single words and short phrases, not B1-level reading material.

Skip it as a standalone course, or if you want grammar explained, sentences in context, or a vocabulary list built from the most common Japanese words. If you want to read without romaji, expect some editing first. The shared-deck description mentions a French course, which looks like a copy-paste error, but the cards themselves are Japanese.

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conjugation drill · A2-B2 · 73 notes · no audio · updated April 2018

A conjugation drill of 73 verbs across 25 forms each, mostly accurate and well organized by verb class, but with no sentences or audio and a couple of wrong answers you would memorize.

Verdict

The deck's strength is that it does one job consistently. Each note is one verb, each card asks for one form, and the pattern groups repeat clearly: u-verbs by ending (く, ぐ, す, つ, ぬ, ぶ, む, る, う), then 来る and する, then ru-verbs. A card such as 飲む asking for the te-form and answering 飲んで is a clean recall task, and the gray glosses like "doesn't [do], will not [do]" help you tell the forms apart. The weaknesses are what the drill leaves out. There are no example sentences, no audio, and no explanation of why a form is built the way it is. All 25 forms of the first verb, 書く, arrive at once, including 書くまい and 書かせられない, which an A2-B2 learner will rarely meet. The notes I read also contain real errors: 帰る has the te-form か[かえ]えって, and 来る has the nakute-form 来[き]らなくて instead of 来[こ]なくて. The verb list also ignores frequency. 咲く, 泳ぐ and 建つ appear early, while 食べる, 来る and する arrive in the last third, and only 43 of the top 1,000 Japanese words are covered.

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exam word list · A1-A2 · 530 notes · no audio · updated May 2020

A 530-card JLPT N5 word list with Japanese-only dictionary definitions, no sentences and no audio; useful as a vocabulary checklist next to a course, weak as a deck to learn from by itself.

Verdict

The word choice is on target for the exam, the readings and glosses in the sample are sound, and every card is one clean kanji headword on the front. The weaknesses are in how the material is taught. All 530 cards are isolated words with no example sentence. The only context is a fragment like ▼駅に～ or ▼本を～. The middle field is a Japanese dictionary definition pitched above the headword. Card #1, 疲れる, is defined as くたびれる． ∥ 機能や性質がおとろえる, and the counter shows 10 of its 10 words appearing for the first time. The order is not graded by difficulty or frequency. The deck opens with 30 verbs, including 締める at #9 and 貸す at #20, while 夜 comes at #135 and 日曜日 at #138. Only 21% of the 1,000 most common words are taught. Particles and です/ます are never taught. The English gloss is set at 10px and listed as a fallback, so you will likely read it every time. Some entries are thin or glitchy: 借りる is just 「(対)貸す」, いくら has a stray 「1」, and 習う has a stray 「］」.

Use this if you are working toward the N5 vocabulary list, can already read kana, and have a textbook or other course supplying sentences and grammar. It also suits you if you want to start reading Japanese dictionary definitions early and will tolerate the friction. Skip it as a first deck, or if you want to speak, listen or build sentences. A true beginner will hit a Japanese definition they cannot read on almost every card and fall back on the tiny English, which defeats the deck's stated design. The missing sentences and the definition difficulty cannot be repaired with settings, so decide on those before you invest.

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sentence deck · N1-N4 · 4,281 notes · no audio · updated April 2016

A 4,281-note JLPT grammar sentence deck that runs from N1 down to N5, so it is usable as a reference or review set for people who already know the grammar but poor as a first course.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its format: nearly every note (4,235 of 4,257 measured) is a complete sentence labeled with the grammar pattern it teaches, such as あえて, ないとも限らない or ざるを得ない, with a short English meaning, a translation and romaji. Patterns recur in several sentences, which helps with recognition. The weaknesses come from the order and the material. The default order starts at N1, and the first tenth has a 24.1% new-word rate. The first card brings in 19 new words out of 19, and the next two bring in 10 of 12 and 9 of 12. Only about 15% of those opening sentences add one new word or fewer. The late parts look easy (96% at one new word or fewer in the last tenth) only because the vocabulary was already seen. The N5 material is at the very end. Many N1 sentences are stiff, literary or translated lines (for example 'You have had the evil chance' for 不運だったまでですよ), and the sample has real errors: a header row imported as a card (#4279, 'eng / jap / level'), a misaligned N3/N4 note (#3046) whose fields hold grammar-pattern text instead of a sentence, and romaji slips such as 'watshi', 'kitainai' and 'o enakatta'. It has no audio, no images and no grammar explanations beyond a one-line gloss.

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vocabulary list · B1-B2 · 3,034 notes · no audio · updated October 2026

A 3,034-card vocabulary companion to the Quartet textbooks that works as a lesson-aligned word drill for people who own the books, but not as a way to learn Japanese on its own.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its structure. Cards follow Quartet's lesson and reading/listening/kanji order, and tags like L08-読2 let you study one lesson at a time. The glosses and readings in the sample are accurate, and furigana is built into the Reading field. The weakness is that 97% of the notes are single words or short phrases, such as 監督 / director, supervision or 柱 / pillar, pole, with no sentence, no audio and no image. Only idiom and proverb cards, like 灯台下暗し and 半信半疑, carry translated examples, and those examples are natural. The opening also mixes basic words with film titles tagged PN (千と千尋の神隠し, もののけ姫, となりのトトロ). Coverage of common vocabulary is thin: 56% of the top 1,000 words and 49% of the top 2,000. That is expected for intermediate material that assumes an earlier course, because the textbook chose the words, not frequency. Some entries are bare fragments: 共通 has the meaning 'する：to be common', and 登坂 is glossed only as 'climbing'. Some cards stack two entries, as in 描く、描く and 一時、一時.

Use this if you are working through Quartet 1 or 2 (roughly N3 to N2), can already read, and want to drill each lesson's word list as you go. It also suits a learner who will add their own example sentences or audio. Skip it if you are a beginner, if you want to learn words in sentences, or if you want listening or speaking practice from the cards. Skip it as well if you do not have the textbooks, since the lesson tags and the kanji-list tail (tags like 漢字C23) make little sense without them. The cards test recognition only, so producing the words from English is left to you.

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sentence deck · A1-B1 · 2,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2021

Part 1 of a 5-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 2,000-sentence Tatoeba pool with audio on every card, but no grammar plan, no readings and a hard start, so it is only worth studying as listening and reading practice after the basics.

Verdict

What it does well: every note is a short sentence, the new-word rate falls from 37.9% in the first tenth to about 14% from the seventh tenth on, and by the later tenths 81-86% of sentences add at most one new word. It also covers 98 of the 100 most common words and has audio on every card. What it does badly: the order is not a course. Card 1 (本当ですよ。) has 3 of 3 words new, and card 3 (野原で叫ぶ声がした。 'There was a voice crying in the field.') has 6 of 7 new. Early cards teach 矢, ぐさり and えぐい, and rare words like 急騰 and 出来心 appear within the first 7% of the deck. Common function words such as とか, たり, そして and こんな never appear. Some translations are loose or wrong: 本当？なぜ？ is glossed 'Do you? Why?', 捕らえどころのない人 is glossed 'He's like an eel', and 僕はあなたの見方です uses 見方 where 味方 is meant. There are no grammar notes, no readings for kanji, and no topic grouping.

Use it if you already read hiragana, katakana and basic kanji, have a textbook or course providing grammar, and want a large bank of short sentences with audio for listening and recognition. Skip it if you are a true beginner, since the 'A1-B1' label overstates how gently it starts, or if you want frequency-ordered vocabulary, a visible grammar sequence, or cards you can study without checking a dictionary. Even for the right learner, expect to suspend some obscure or oddly translated cards.

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Number 9 in our ranking. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · A1-B1 · 1,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2021

Part 1 of a 6-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 1,000-note Japanese vocabulary deck with natural two-sentence examples and full audio, worth studying if you already read kana, but it is not a strict frequency list and it teaches no grammar.

Verdict

The strongest part is the example sentences. Each note gives two everyday sentences with kana readings and English translations, for example 私は絵を見るのが好きです。 and 今朝は早く家を出ました。, and the sample shows no mistranslations. Every note has audio, and the measurement counts 3,000 files, though I can't judge their quality. The weak points are ordering and selection. In part 1 only 17% of sentences add at most one new word, and notes #1 and #2 introduce 10 new words each in their sentences, so the opening is a lot to take in. That rises to 64-84% in later parts. The deck also covers only 569 of the top 1,000 words on the frequency list and omits common function words such as って, など, しかし and そして. At the same time it spends slots on rare themed nouns like きりん, ドジャース, エベレスト and お巡りさん. Grammar appears only as a byproduct of the sentences plus conjugation tables, and the front of the card is crowded with everything at once.

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vocabulary list · A1-A2 · 790 notes · no audio · updated May 2021

A 790-note Minna no Nihongo I vocabulary list with reliable readings, meanings and verb groups, worth studying only if you own the textbook, since it has no audio, almost no sentences, and no grammar teaching.

Verdict

The word-level data is careful. In the sample, verb notes give the reading, the group (起きます is II, 働きます is I) and an antonym pair such as 貸します / 借ります. Nearly every note carries a chapter number and tag, so you can pull one lesson at a time. The weaknesses are structural. The default order stacks the note types one after another, so the first verb notes are chapter 4 to 9 verbs and the adverbs at the end jump around (chapters 19, 14, 8, 9, 18). About 87% of the notes are bare words or short phrases, and the only real sentences are the adverb examples, such as ええ、真っ直ぐ行ってください。 Those examples print rare kanji like 屹度 and 若し while the comment says to write them in kana. There is no audio. Comment fields are dense and point ahead to chapters 25 to 50, such as 遭います (45) on a chapter 6 verb. I found two typos in comments: 事後 where 事故 is meant, and 電源[でんげ] for でんげん.

Use this if you are working through Minna no Nihongo I and want a lesson-by-lesson vocabulary drill with 2 cards per note, each lesson filtered by its chapter tag. It works best as a companion to the book, which supplies the grammar and example sentences. Do not use it as a standalone course, to learn the most common Japanese words (it teaches 358 of the top 1,000 on the frequency list), or to train your ear. Learners who need sentences, grammar explanations or audio should look elsewhere or plan to add a lot themselves.

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vocabulary list with example sentences · A1-B2 · 2,999 notes · audio on 100% · updated April 2022

Part 1 of a 2-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A large, accurate, fully voiced Japanese vocabulary deck with short natural example sentences, worth studying as a supplement to a course but not as a course of its own.

Verdict

The sentences are the strength. In the sample they are short, everyday and correct, for example 京都にはお寺が«多い»。 ("There are a lot of temples in Kyoto."), and they stay easy even on abstract words like 困難 and 証明. The readings and English translations in the sample are right, and every note has word and sentence audio (presence only; I can't judge the voices). The weak points are sequencing, grammar and coverage. Only 67% of the sentences add at most one new word, and that share swings from 36% in the first tenth to 88% in the sixth and back down to 61% in the eighth. The vocabulary mix is uneven: there are odd picks like タイプライター at card 1507, and common words such as って, けど, という, など, そして and しかし never appear. Nothing teaches grammar, and the sentences are unrelated to each other. Every note makes a single recognition card (Japanese on the front, reading, English and audio on the back), so you never practice producing the word.

This suits you if you can already read kana, want a few thousand common words each with a sentence and native-style audio, and are learning grammar elsewhere. It also works as a gap-filler at roughly A2 to B1. Skip it if you are a complete beginner who needs a guided path, if you want grammar explained or sentence patterns built up, or if you want to practice speaking or writing. The front shows no furigana, so the sentences are only readable if you already know the kanji or are willing to flip every card. The description calls this Part 2, but the indexes run 1 to 2,999, so it looks like the first half of the 6k list; check which half you have.

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vocabulary list · A1-B1 · 2,109 notes · no audio · updated February 2019

A 2,109-note vocabulary list that follows Minna no Nihongo lessons 1-50, worth using only as a companion to the textbook and not as a way to learn Japanese on its own.

Verdict

The deck keeps to the textbook's lesson order, with a subdeck for each lesson, so you can study each chapter's words when you reach it. Every note makes two cards, one showing the reading with furigana and one showing the English, and the templates are clean. In the sample, readings and glosses are mostly right, and the bracketed collocation frames such as 掛けます［かぎを〜］ and 磨きます［歯を〜］ show which particle a verb takes. Against that, it is a word list. Of the 2,006 notes measured, only 227 (11%) are four words or longer, and the opening shows isolated items like わたし, あなた and 教師. Nothing shows a word or a grammar pattern in use. There is no audio, so you never hear pitch or pronunciation. Coverage of common vocabulary is partial: it teaches 566 of the 1,000 most frequent words and 902 of the top 2,000, and it skips grammar-bearing words like ので, たい and より because the book teaches those in grammar sections. It also spends slots on items like ジャカルタ, 金閣寺 and ホッチキス. The text has errors: backticks and colons stand in for quotes and apostrophes ("child:s name", "`a national of`"), "aggreeable" is misspelled, and 初めまして is glossed as "How do you do it?". The CheckError tag suggests the author knew of unresolved problems.

Use this if you are working through Minna no Nihongo with the book and a teacher or classmates, and you want a ready-made, lesson-sorted vocabulary drill so you do not have to type 2,000 entries. You can then learn grammar and sentence patterns from the book, and treat the deck only as a way to keep the words active. Do not use it if you want a self-contained course, if you are learning from sentences in context, or if you do not own the textbook. Without the book you get no grammar and no example sentences, and you will meet confusable pairs like 先生 and 教師 (both "teacher, instructor") with nothing to separate them.

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Number 10 in our ranking. Part 2 of a 3-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score. Its scores and full report are in the top 10 above.

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vocabulary list · B1-C1 · 1,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2021

Part 6 of a 6-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 1,000-note slice (words 5001-6000) of the Core 6000 sentence-vocabulary deck: worth studying only if you already know the first 5,000 words, and even then as a source to trim rather than follow card by card.

Verdict

The deck's strength is the card content. Every note has a headword with reading, English meaning, part of speech, a short example sentence with translation, and a sound file (presence confirmed, quality not judged). The sentences are brief and mostly natural: 彼は来年定年を迎える, 会社が倒産しました, 部下が疲労で倒れたの. In the sample the readings and translations are almost all right. The weaknesses are in the sequencing and the selection. Only 22% of sentences add at most one new word, and in the first 100 notes it is 3%. A card like 組み込む ("6 of 8" example words first seen) asks you to absorb the headword plus several other items at once. That count only tracks words the deck has already shown, so someone arriving from Core 6000 notes 1-5000 will find the real load lower, but the deck cannot guarantee that. The slice also has no internal difficulty gradient. It ends on dated or niche items such as 日ソ, 国鉄 and 大蔵省, plus katakana loanwords like ディスコ and 録音テープ. Many sentences end in の, わ or よ, which is casual and sometimes gendered speech, and a few glosses are loose (文学者 as "literati", ぺらぺら given only as "flimsy, thin").

Use it if you are an intermediate learner who has finished earlier Core 6000 material, or has a comparable vocabulary base, and want a large batch of mid-frequency written-style words with audio, each with a sentence. It suits passive recognition for reading and listening. Do not use it as a first or only deck. It teaches only 56% of the 1,000 most common words and 42% of the top 2,000 (や, でも, どう, そして, 場合 never appear), so you would need a core list alongside it. It also teaches no grammar and gives no connected context. It does not train production, since every card goes from Japanese to English only. Expect to cut cards and rework the template.

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vocabulary list · B1-B2 · 1,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2021

Part 3 of a 6-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 1,000-word continuation of a Core 3000 vocabulary sequence (indexes 2001-3000) with an example sentence and recorded audio on every card, worth studying if you have finished the earlier thousands and want recognition practice, but not a graded course.

Verdict

Every note has a headword, a kana reading, an English meaning, a full example sentence with its own reading and translation, and word and sentence audio (all 1,000 notes carry sound files). In the sample the sentences are short, natural everyday Japanese, such as 母は糸を針に通した and 牛乳は品切れだったよ, and the translations read fluently. The weak points are structural. Only 29% of sentences add at most one new word, and the ten parts of the deck run from 5% (first hundred notes) to 50% (last hundred). The sentences were written to show each headword, not built from earlier cards, so the first note, 彼の名前をご存知ですか, is all new words. The measured new-word rate is partly inflated because the tool cannot see the first two thousand words that came before this deck, so you will meet fewer unknowns than it implies if you have studied those. The pitch-accent field has real defects: the 残り card carries a conjugation table for 連続する, 連続 itself says "No data available," and ぶら下がる lists the causative as ぶらさがせる. The words are mostly useful, but the order is not frequency-driven. Rare words such as 易しい, ラッシュアワー and 書留 sit in the first 5% of the deck, while common words appear much later.

Use this if you already know a few thousand words, roughly intermediate level, and want more vocabulary in a fixed order, each with a model sentence, a native-speaker word recording and pitch accent for reference. It fits learners who will use it alongside reading, a grammar resource or a textbook, and who can tolerate some noise in the pitch field. Skip it if you are a beginner, if you need sentences you can mostly read before you study them, or if you want the deck itself to teach grammar. It also does not train production: there is one card per note, going from Japanese to meaning only.

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sentence deck · A1-B2 · 1,999 notes · audio on 100% · updated June 2017

Part 3 of a 3-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 1,999-card slice of the Core 6k Japanese vocabulary deck that pairs every word with a short, natural example sentence and audio, worth studying as a vocabulary drill but not as a graded course.

Verdict

The strongest parts are the sentences and the audio. In the sample the examples are short and natural, such as 「窓を«開けて»ください。」 and 「彼は«眉»が濃いね。」, and they usually run easier than the word they illustrate. All 1,999 notes carry audio, and the cards I saw read accurately. The weakness is sequencing. Only 48% of sentences add at most one new word, and from about the 10% mark to the 60% mark that figure sits between 39% and 53%. Order follows kanji families (閉じる, 閉める, 閉まる; 片手, 片方, 片側; 発達, 発明, 発電, 発電所) rather than usefulness. Rare words such as きりん, 酸っぱい and 秋分 appear early. Grammar is never taught, and the sentences do not connect to one another. This is also part 3 of a split, so gaps like でも, ちょっと and そして may belong to the other parts. The measured coverage is 71% of the top 1,000 and 59% of the top 2,000 words.

Use this if you already have the basics, or you have the other two parts, and you want a large vocabulary drill with clear audio and sentence context. It suits someone who studies the English-to-Japanese cloze cards and is happy to learn a word from a single sentence. Skip it if you are a true beginner who needs grammar explained or sentences built from words you already know. Also skip it if you expect this part alone to work as a complete course, since it is not a clean tail of the sequence and the vocabulary indexes run from 24 to 5999.

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vocabulary list · A1-B2 · 1,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2021

Part 2 of a 6-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A sentence-based vocabulary deck for the second 1,000 words of a core list, with audio on every card and two example sentences per word; worth studying if you already know the basics, with some template and ordering work.

Verdict

Every card pairs a headword with two natural, everyday sentences, English translations, spaced-kana readings behind a hint, and audio. Verbs and adjectives get a conjugation table. The deck is clean: 1,000 distinct headwords, no repeats, no missing fields. Its main weakness is that the sentences are written around each word, not built up in order. Only 36% add at most one new word, and many bring in two to five. The 凄い card has 16 of 16 sentence words new, but the measurement starts from zero, so the opening looks harsher than it is for someone who has done the first thousand. Later cards are lighter: 気に入る adds 1 new word in its sentences and 誕生日 adds none. The order does not follow frequency. ゴールキーパー, 白線 and タイプライター appear alongside or before far commoner words, and しかし, そして and ながら never appear in the deck's text. The cards also have a few slips: the 対する table gives たいさない and たいせる as if it were a plain godan verb, and the sentence for 大型 is translated 'My father is a large bus driver'. The front is cluttered and shows the reading above the word, so each card trains recognition only.

Use this if you have already worked through a first set of about a thousand words, or have roughly N5 to low N4 Japanese. You should read kana and basic kanji comfortably and want vocabulary in sentence context with audio, and you should be willing to adjust the card template once. Skip it as a first deck, and skip it if you want grammar taught in order, speaking or typing practice, or a tight frequency ranking. The stated A1-B2 range is generous: the sample leans toward lower-intermediate material such as 欧米, 所有 and 政府, and A1 learners will find it too hard.

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vocabulary list · A1-B1 · 630 notes · no audio · updated February 2020

Part 2 of a 4-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

JFZ 2 is a 630-note vocabulary list built to accompany a textbook; without that textbook it is a poor deck to study, because it has no sentences, no audio, and a word choice that ignores frequency.

Verdict

The cards themselves are clean. In the sample, translations and readings look correct (砂糖 is sugar, 古い is old, 遅れる is to oversleep's neighbor 'to be late'), and the two templates are simple: Japanese to English, then English to Japanese. The weakness is the material. The deck opens with 'rimokon', 'ranpu', ビデオデッキ and 箪笥 (dresser, rank 36,088, fifth word in), and it covers only 14% of the 1,000 most common words. Missing entirely are は, を, と, これ, それ, 私 and 見る. Loanwords such as ジーパン, カンガルー, ホッチキス and コカ・コーラ fill many slots. Of 535 measured notes, 531 are single words or short phrases, so there is no sentence context, no grammar, and no audio or images. The new-word rate stays between 81% and 98% in every part, which is what a list of unrelated words looks like, not a built-up sequence.

Use it only if you are working through the JFZ 2 course and want a lesson-by-lesson vocabulary check; the lesson subdecks line up with that use. Do not use it as a general A1-B1 Japanese deck or as a first deck. You would pick up a lot of low-frequency nouns, such as 睫毛 or 国内線, before the particles and basic verbs that make a sentence. The labeled range of A1-B1 is also optimistic, since the sample reads as a nouns-and-katakana list.

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vocabulary list · B1-B2 · 1,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2021

Part 5 of a 6-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 1,000-word slice (Core 5000 entries 4001-5000) of intermediate vocabulary with a short example sentence and word audio on every card, worth studying only if you already know the first 4,000 words and will rework the card layout.

Verdict

The example sentences are the strength. In the sample they are short, natural and conversational: 湖に鳥の群れがいたよ, 警察がその男を捜しているの, 電車の終点で降りました. Each one shows the headword in a typical frame, and every note has word and sentence audio. The weaknesses are in how the material is arranged. There is no sentence-level progression: in the measurements only 23% of sentences add at most one new word, and the opening runs add several (note 4001 is 10 of 10 first-seen words). That figure treats this slice in isolation, so part of it comes from the missing first 4,000 words. Headword choice is uneven: 悪酔い, 戸棚, 引き算 and 足し算 appear early, at ranks past 30,000, while common words wait. The data has slips: 笛 carries the conjugation table for 避難する, some verbs show an empty potential row, and a few glosses read oddly, such as 扉 as 'hinged door'. The front of the card also shows the reading, the example sentence and the pitch table before you answer.

Use this deck if you are an intermediate learner (roughly N3-N2 territory) who has finished or knows the earlier Core slices and wants more nouns, verbs and verbal nouns with audio. It also suits you if you are willing to edit the template and to check pitch and conjugation data against another source. Skip it if you are a beginner, because the sentences assume far more vocabulary than the deck teaches and the slice starts at word 4,001. Skip it too if you want grammar explanations, a coherent course, or a deck you can study without touching it.

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vocabulary list · B1-B2 · 1,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2021

Part 4 of a 6-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

This is the fourth thousand of the Core 4000 sequence (indices 3001-4000): 1,000 intermediate words, each with a short natural example sentence and full audio. It's worth studying only if you've already done the first 3,000 and want recognition practice.

Verdict

The strengths are the sentences and the audio coverage. Every note has a short, everyday example such as 「地震で電車が脱線したよ。」 or 「この鍋は鉄でできています。」, with kana spacing and an English translation, and all 1,000 notes carry word and sentence audio. The weaknesses are structural. It's a frequency-ordered word list, not a course, so nothing links one sentence to the next and no grammar is taught. The card is recognition-only (Word -> Meaning), with the reading and a full pitch-accent conjugation table on the front. The vocabulary drifts toward rare words as you go: 追い付く, 早退, 腹一杯 and 電柱 appear alongside useful items like 親戚 and 方言. Readings and glosses in the sample are mostly right, but the 浮く table lists うかびます (the 浮かぶ form), and a few glosses are loose, such as 博士 as 'expert, master'. The measured sentence difficulty is skewed because the file starts at 3001, so earlier words show up as 'new' in the opening notes. If you came from the first 3,000 words, the sentences should be easier than the numbers suggest. The share of sentences adding at most one new word rises from 6% in the first tenth to 50% in the last, and 27% overall.

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sentence deck · A2-B1 · 2,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2021

Part 2 of a 5-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 2,000-sentence Tatoeba set with audio on every card, but no sequencing, grammar support or level control, so it works only as a supplement for someone who already reads Japanese.

Verdict

The deck is clean material. In about 90 sampled notes the Japanese is natural and the English matches it, and every note has a sound file (presence only; the tool can't judge how the audio sounds, so play a few cards). The new-word rate falls from 38.3% to about 13% and then holds, and 57% of sentences add at most one new word. The problems come from where the sentences were drawn: the opening is not A2 material. Card 5 is 泳者の呼吸機能の特性について ("Concerning the characteristics of respiratory function in swimmers"), and only 9.5% of the first 200 sentences add one new word or fewer. Later cards drift toward rare words such as 要撃, 血痕 and 牙城 (the tool flags 422 rare words), while common words like そして, 場合, 方法 and 場所 never appear. Only 69% of the top 1,000 words are covered. Nothing teaches or sequences grammar, and each card is an isolated sentence.

This deck suits an upper-beginner or intermediate learner who already knows basic grammar and a core vocabulary, reads kanji without furigana, and wants a large pool of listening and reading examples to mine. It is a poor first deck. If you need a path from A2 to B1, a reason to learn words in a particular order, or help with how structures work, you would be studying a random sample of Japanese with the gaps left for you to find.

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sentence deck · B1-B2 · 2,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2021

Part 3 of a 5-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 2,000-sentence Tatoeba set with audio on every card, aimed at B1-B2, but it has no grammar order and a harsh opening, so it works as extra reading practice rather than a course.

Verdict

The deck's strengths are the sentences themselves and the volume. The Japanese in the sample is natural, and the translations nearly always match (the exception is #1008, whose English adds "tomorrow"). Every card has audio, which the page says is Microsoft Azure text-to-speech, and I can't judge how it sounds. The new-word rate falls from 35.9% in the first fifth to about 12% by part 7, so the later cards are easier to read: from part 7 on, 61-71% of sentences add at most one new word. The opening is the weak point. Card #1 (風邪を引いて声がかれてしまった。) is 9 of 9 new words, and #2 through #4 are 8 of 10, 8 of 9 and 8 of 12 new. Rare words arrive early: 気管支炎 at 2% of the deck, 洋裁 and いそぐ at 5%. Nothing in the sample orders the grammar. The first 30 cards mix ことになっている, passives, potentials and てしまう with no preparation, and the cards have no explanations or grammar tags. The vocabulary is also oddly shaped. The deck covers 764 of the top 1,000 words, and it skips common modern and spoken words such as ああ, お前, アニメ and 動画 while teaching specialized ones like 外用のみに使用し、内服しないで下さい (#107).

Use it if you already read Japanese at around intermediate level, know your grammar from a textbook or course, and want a large pile of audio-backed sentences to absorb vocabulary and patterns from. It is best studied after you have a base, because the later cards are easier than the first few hundred. Skip it if you are a true beginner, if you want the deck to teach grammar or build vocabulary in a sensible order, or if your goal is anime, web or casual conversation. Each card is an isolated Tatoeba sentence with no theme, dialogue or lesson behind it, so you get no context to hold the words together.

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vocabulary list · A1-B1 · 389 notes · no audio · updated February 2020

Part 3 of a 4-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 389-note vocabulary list that follows the JFZ 3 textbook chapter by chapter, useful only as a companion to that book, not as a course on its own.

Verdict

The deck does one job cleanly: it gives you the book's new words as single-word cards with readings, in both directions (Japanese to English, English to Japanese). Glosses in the sample are mostly correct and short, like 戻[もど]る = "to go or come back, return". The weaknesses are bigger. 99% of notes are single words or short phrases, and the sample has no sentence showing a word in use, so you learn isolated labels and no grammar. The order follows the textbook's themes, not frequency or difficulty. Rare words come early: オセアニア, 赤道 and 北極 appear in the first 6% of the deck, and 蕁麻疹, 冥王星 and 混浴 sit among the everyday words. Only 137 of the 1,000 most common words are taught. The deck description says duplicates from earlier books were removed, so the many missing basics (が, を, ます, これ) probably live in the earlier JFZ decks. There is no audio and no images. There are also two slips in the sample: 海水浴 is given the reading かいみずよく, and "Oceana" is misspelled.

Use this if you are working through JFZ 3 (or the earlier JFZ books) and want a vocabulary drill to run beside the book's own dialogues and grammar explanations. It also suits someone who wants the kanji-set subdecks (休上下左右, 林森石花犬虫町 and so on) as a recognition drill for words built on those characters. Skip it if you want a standalone route to reading or speaking, if you are an absolute beginner without the earlier books, or if you learn best from sentences and audio. Most people choosing by usefulness for general Japanese should pick a frequency-ordered or sentence-based deck.

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sentence deck · B1-B2 · 2,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2021

Part 4 of a 5-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 2,000-sentence Tatoeba collection with a text-to-speech audio file on every card; it is usable as listening and reading volume for intermediate learners, but it is not a structured course and is not worth studying front to back.

Verdict

The deck's strongest point is that every note has audio and that the Japanese is generally clean, readable sentences at a B1-B2 length (mean 12.5 words as counted). The new-word rate falls from 34.8% in the first tenth to about 11-13% by the end, and the top 100 words are all taught early. The weaknesses are in the material itself. Card #1 (僕は、彼をすばらしい先生だと考えている。) has 11 of 11 words new, and #2 has 11 of 13. Only 40% of sentences add one new word or fewer, and just 6% in the first 200. Rare vocabulary arrives early and keeps arriving (蝙蝠 at 2% of the deck, 水の泡 and 退路 by 12%), while 17% of the top 1,000 words never appear. Sentences range from everyday lines to news-style ones (#25 三浦容疑者の拘置中の過ごし方が明らかになった) and oddities (#3 on a toilet seat). Nothing explains grammar, and there are no tags beyond LTL. A few English backs are wrong or garbled: #28 renders 甘やかされすぎていた as the mother 'not very hard on the child', #2 reads 'Laborers required raising of a salary of the manager', and #1995 has 'have been make'.

Use it if you already have basic grammar and roughly the first thousand words, you have a textbook or grammar guide beside you, and you want a large pool of real sentences to read and listen to. It suits someone who will look words up and skip or suspend cards that are too obscure. Skip it if you are a beginner, want a guided path through grammar, want your vocabulary taken in frequency order, or want cards that build on each other through a lesson or story. The sentences are not the problem. The problem is that this is a pile of sentences with no organizing layer, and you would have to supply that yourself.

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vocabulary list with example sentences · B1-B2 · 3,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated April 2022

Part 2 of a 2-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

JP Core 6k Part 2 is a 3,000-card sentence deck covering the second half of a 6,000-word list, and it is worth studying if you have finished Part 1 or know roughly the first 3,000 words.

Verdict

Each card is one headword with one short, natural example sentence, such as 床に«洗剤»をこぼしてしまいました and 彼は仕事を転勤しました style everyday lines, an English translation, and full audio on both word and sentence. The front shows only unfurigana'd Japanese, and the back adds furigana, English and sound, which is a clean recognition card. Weaknesses show up in three places. The sentences are not built around what you already know: early cards bring in several other unknown words (5 of 13 on 囁く, 5 of 9 on 洗剤), and only 7.7% of the first 299 sentences add at most one new word, though that figure counts only words in this file and Part 1 is not included. The order also drifts toward rare words, with 65-74% of new words in the last four tenths ranked past 5,000 (秋分, 清書, クンクン, そびえる). And there is no grammar help at all, so polite, plain and particle-ending forms (ですね, たの, よね) are mixed with no explanation. A few small slips appear: on the 煮る card the sentence highlights 豆 rather than the verb, 'he'lll' is a typo, and some furigana splits are misaligned (その 頃彼[ころ かれ]). None of these change meaning.

Use it if you already read simple Japanese, have worked through Part 1 or a comparable 3,000-word base, and want to widen vocabulary for B1-B2 reading with sound on every card. It suits a learner who is happy to learn from isolated sentences. Skip it if you are a beginner, if you want grammar explained or a connected course, or if you want only high-frequency words, since the later half is mostly low-frequency vocabulary.

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sentence deck · B2-C1 · 2,000 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2021

Part 5 of a 5-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 2,000-sentence Japanese deck with audio on every card, aimed at B2-C1 readers, that works as a pool of real-sounding sentences to mine selectively but not as a graded course.

Verdict

What it does well: every note is a full sentence (average 18.9 words by the Janome count, particles included) with Japanese and English audio, and the vocabulary coverage is respectable, with 940 of the 1,000 most common words taught and all of the top 100 in the first quarter. The Japanese reads as natural, and the English usually carries the meaning. What it does badly: there is no on-ramp. Card #1 introduces 14 of its 14 words as new, #4 introduces 18 of 23, and the first 200 cards bring in 1,304 distinct words, over six new words per card. Only 0.5% of sentences in that stretch add one new word or fewer, and 25% do across the whole deck. Nothing explains grammar or links one card to the next. The content comes from scraped Tatoeba, web and anime text, so you get a pharmacy of everything: the period euphemism in #4 (アレの日), the sexual-desire line in #1209, a USB hub in #19, and rare words like 顰蹙 and 真贋. Common words such as 嬉しい and 色々 never appear. Some translations are loose (#2 renders マジボケ as 'said that as a joke', and #129 romanizes まゆみ as 'Miyumi').

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vocabulary list · A2-B1 · 413 notes · no audio · updated July 2021

Part 5 of a 4-part deck; each part is ranked on its own score.

A 413-note vocabulary list built around Japanese From Zero book 5: usable as a lesson-by-lesson checklist for that course, but weak as a standalone study deck.

Verdict

The deck is clean and consistent. Every note has a Front and a Back, nothing is missing a field, and the lesson tags (5-1 to 5-13, 5-A to 5-P) let you study in the course's order. Its limits are in the content. There is no audio, no image, and no example sentence: only 20 of 408 measured fronts run to four words or more, and the sample shows short phrases such as 気がつく and 今の うち, not sentences. The ordering is thematic, not graded. The first nine cards are onomatopoeia (ぽとぽと, ワンワン, ガチャガチャ), then food names (たこやき, すきやき), then loanwords (テスラ, メンバーズカード). Rare words come early: くたくた is card 5, and the measurement puts it near rank 39,000. The deck covers only 14% of the top 1,000 words, and the very common words that are missing (これ, 時間, もう, できる, 思う) are probably taught in earlier books of the series. The Japanese is also often written in a mixed kana and kanji style: 社いん, 上し, ぶ下, よしん, い間, しょう来. Those spellings are not what you would meet in print. Some glosses carry leftover fragments such as "(NOT tod)", "(dk)" and "(st)".

Use this if you are working through Japanese From Zero 5 and want a flashcard list that matches its lessons, and you already read kana comfortably and accept some nonstandard spellings. Skip it if you want a deck that teaches you Japanese by itself. It gives you words with English glosses and nothing around them: no sentences, no grammar, no sound. It also does not follow frequency or difficulty, so you cannot trust it to teach the most useful words first.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 46 notes · audio on 100% · updated November 2013

Script: the kana syllabaries.

A 46-card hiragana starter deck with accurate readings and audio on every note, worth studying if you fix its back template first and know it stops at the basic characters.

Verdict

What it does well: every card shows one large kana and asks you to type the romaji, in standard gojuon order (あ, い, う, え, お, then か, き, く…). That is a sensible, low-load way to start. In the sample, the readings are correct standard Hepburn (し is shi, ち is chi, つ is tsu, を is wo), and the file shows no repeated or missing fields. All 46 notes carry a sound file. What it does badly: the back template is malformed. It has a duplicated <hr id=answer> and an unclosed <div font-size: 4px; color: white; {{Back}}> tag, so the audio and romaji on the answer side probably don't display or play properly. I can't see the rendered card, so check it. Each card is a bare character, with no example word, no mnemonic and no stroke order, and the deck stops at the 46 basic characters. The sample shows no dakuten (が, ざ) and no combinations (きゃ, しゅ), and you need both to read real Japanese.

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vocabulary list · unclear · 10,036 notes · no audio · updated July 2013

Names: the readings of japanese proper nouns.

A 10,036-card kanji-to-reading drill for Japanese place names, surnames and given names, ordered by Wikipedia frequency; worth studying only if reading names is your specific goal.

Verdict

The deck does one thing well: it drills how to read the names you will meet in Japanese text. Entries run in descending usage order, from 日本 (234,572) and 東京 down to 184, and the opening cards are the right ones: 北海道, 神奈川, 鈴木, 佐藤. The sampled readings look careful, including hard ones like 厚岸町 あっけしちょう, 網干 あぼし and 福知山線 ふくちやません. Each card also shows usage splits such as 堺 loc 70% / fam 30%, which suits names with several readings. Beyond the readings, there is almost nothing else. The deck has no sentences, translations, audio or images, and the Commonness number is never shown on the card. Rare entries arrive early (京浜東北線 at 15% of the deck, 山陽本線 at 6%), and the tail is full of surnames and entertainers' names (亀梨, 井ノ原) that tied at 184 uses, so their order is arbitrary. Some low-percentage readings are odd, such as 良枝 ヤンジ (6%), which looks like an artifact of automatic generation.

Use it if you already read kana and a fair amount of kanji, you read Japanese news, Wikipedia or novels, and you want to stop stumbling over names. Work through roughly the first 1,000 to 2,000 cards and stop where the surnames stop feeling familiar. Skip it if you want vocabulary, grammar, listening or speaking practice. It teaches no meanings and no usage, and only 237 of the 1,000 most common general words appear, mostly as parts of names. Ordinary words are not what it is for.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 104 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2014

Script: the kana syllabaries.

A complete 104-card hiragana drill with audio on every card and typed-romaji recall, worth studying only if you do the Basic subdeck first, because the default order starts with the hardest characters.

Verdict

The deck covers the full hiragana set, including the basic 46, the dakuten and handakuten sounds, and the yōon combinations. Every note has a recording, and the card is a large kana, a typed romaji answer, then audio on the back. The Basic subdeck (#59-104) runs in standard あ-い-う-え-お order and ends at ん. The weak point is the order you meet it in. The deck opens on ぶ, ぼ, きゃ, ぎゅ, じゅ, runs through the dakuten and yōon sets, and puts あ, い, う last. The description never says to use the Basic subdeck first. Each note is only a character, a romaji reading and audio, so there are no words, no mnemonics and no help with lookalikes such as ぬ/め or は/ほ. The typed answer also has a trap: ぢ and づ are stored as 'dzi' and 'dzu', so typing the usual 'ji' or 'zu' is marked wrong.

Use it if you are a complete beginner who wants a plain, no-frills way to drill kana-to-sound recall, and you are willing to start with Basic yourself. It also works as a reference list of every hiragana with a recording. Skip it if you want kana taught through words, mnemonics or reading practice, or if you want to open the deck and study it in the order shown. Stroke order depends on the KanjiStrokeOrders font being installed, as the description says, and I cannot check how that renders.

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alphabet or script deck · A1-B2 · 2,200 notes · no audio · updated December 2020

Characters: heisig's keyword-and-story method.

A complete, accurate card set for the 2,200 kanji of Heisig's Remembering the Kanji 1 (6th ed.), worth studying only if you are working through that book, and not a general Japanese deck.

Verdict

The cards are clean and consistent. Each one shows an English keyword on the front ("One", "Rice Field", "Lightning Bug") and the kanji in large type on the back, with stroke count, Heisig number and lesson number. Order follows the book (#1 一 through #2200 巳), and every sampled card was filled in the same way. What it lacks is everything beyond the keyword. The sampled notes had no readings, example words or sentences, and the Story field was empty in every one. There is no audio and no images. The order follows Heisig's component logic, not usefulness, so 吾 "I", 呂 "Spine" and 旦 "Nightbreak" sit in the first 30 cards, while 匁 "Monme" turns up at #1104. The deck teaches you to recognize and write a shape from an English prompt. It does not teach you a word you could read or say.

Use this if you own the book, have chosen the Heisig method, and want a ready-made set to follow it in order. It also suits learners who accept that readings and vocabulary will come later, from another source. Don't use it as your main deck if you want to read, listen or speak soon. The A1-B2 label in the metadata overstates it: the deck is a script-memorization tool with no stated level, and a beginner could finish it without being able to read a sentence.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 122 notes · audio on 100% · updated June 2018

Script: the kana syllabaries.

A complete 122-note hiragana and katakana drill with audio on every note, worth studying once you reorder it, because the default order puts basic kana last.

Verdict

The deck is clear to study. Each card shows one labeled kana and asks you to read it; the back adds the rōmaji, the same sound in the other script, a stroke diagram and audio. The measurements confirm audio on 122 of 122 notes, and stroke diagrams exist for the basic kana (71 notes). It teaches nothing in context: there are no example words, so you never see a kana in a real word, and the digraph and ヴ notes have no stroke diagrams. The order is the main flaw. The first notes are こ, し, た, ち, つ, and voiced kana like が and ぎ start at note 18. Digraphs such as きゃ appear around note 35, and in the sample the plain vowels あ, う, え, お sit around positions 72 to 76, after the digraphs. The sampled note id 70 also has its scripts swapped (ペ in the hiragana field, ぺ in the katakana field), so that card teaches the wrong script on the front. The frequency figures say little here, since the deck's words are just kana strings.

Use it if you can spend a few minutes reordering it and you want recognition practice with native audio for both scripts. It is a drill, not a course. Do not use it as your only first exposure to kana in an order that builds, and do not expect it to teach vocabulary, reading in context, or how digraphs and the foreign-sound kana work.

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alphabet or script deck · N5-N1 and beyond (JLPT 0 to 5, including jinmeiyou and rare kanji) · 3,787 notes · no audio · updated August 2026

Characters: every jouyou, jinmeiyou and jlpt kanji, one note each.

All in One Kanji is a thorough, well-built reference deck for learning to recognize, recall and write 3,787 kanji, but it contains no sentences or audio and is not a general Japanese course.

Verdict

What it does well: one kanji per note, ordered roughly by Jouyou school grade (grade 1 first: 一 二 三 … 日 月 木 山), then secondary-school and jinmeiyou characters, with the rarest at the end. Each note has readings, an English keyword, a radical and component breakdown, stroke data, Koohii mnemonics and example words with readings and glosses. The recognition card fronts show only the kanji. The recall card fronts show the English keyword plus a hint button. Most of the sample is accurate, e.g. 糖 with 砂糖 and 絹 with 絹糸. What it does badly: the example words are bare dictionary entries, not sentences, so you never see a kanji used in context (0 of 3,729 measured notes are sentences). There are no sound files and no images. The late deck is dominated by obscure vocabulary, such as 鯰 with 鯰絵 and 瓢箪鯰, 鮃 with 舌鮃 and 赤舌鮃, and 鰌 with 仏泥鰌 and 石泥鰌. About 46% of notes are missing a field that most notes fill, and the rare-kanji notes show it: 郞 has no frequency data, 戈 has a pasted reference list as its story, and 諤 and 揉 have garbled Onyomi fields ("ガク あご", "ジュウ も.める"). Example glosses are sometimes cut off with "…", and some mnemonics are crude or low-effort (山: "YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY NEED A MNEMONIC FOR THIS!!!!"). Many Koohii stories cite Heisig frame numbers like "(#157)" that do not match this deck's order.

Who should use it: learners who already read some Japanese and want to add kanji reading, meaning and writing, especially on the first 2,136 Jouyou kanji up to roughly N1. It also works as a lookup and stroke-order reference for people working with a textbook or sentence deck. Who should not: beginners looking for a first deck, and anyone who wants to learn vocabulary, grammar, listening or sentence reading from the deck itself. Past the Jouyou set, the jinmeiyou and rare kanji mostly add obscure words and weak data that very few learners will need.

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exam word list · Kanken grades 10 to 1 (elementary school kanji through rare kanji) · 6,265 notes · no audio · updated November 2026

Characters: all kanji of the kanken exam, in japanese only, made for native speakers.

A 6,265-kanji Kanken reference deck written entirely in Japanese, with real compounds and stroke-order images but no sentences or audio, worth studying only if you read Japanese and are preparing for the exam.

Verdict

The order is sound: the default sequence starts at Kanken level 10 (百, 町, 先, 人) and ends at level 1, and the level medians run from 1% to 78% through the deck. In the sample, readings, definitions and furigana are accurate, and 99% of notes carry a stroke-order diagram. Each word carries a 小/中/高/外 tag showing how hard its reading is. The weaknesses are structural. Every note is one kanji plus a list of words, with no sentences, no audio and one recognition card per note, so nothing trains you to write the kanji from a reading. Cards are heavy: 生 carries 13 meanings, 22 kun readings and 31 words, 27 of them new. The ［外］ lines contain stand-ins such as 右ける, 田る, 校える and 一め, which are a kanji plus an ending rather than words anyone writes. Archaic senses can come first, so 町 opens with あぜみち before まち. From about the fifth tenth on, essentially none of the new words are in the top 5,000, and the closing cards teach things like 吮癰舐痔 and 牛驥同皁.

Use it if you read Japanese comfortably, since the definitions are in Japanese dictionary style with no English, and you are studying for Kanken. The first third (levels 10 to 3) is the most useful for general reading, because the compounds there (校長, 研究, 逮捕) are common. The level 1 and pre-1 material, roughly the last 45% of the deck, only makes sense for someone sitting those grades. Skip it if you are a beginner, want English glosses, want vocabulary in sentences, or want listening practice. Keep the default order. The level tags would put level 1, the hardest, first, so repositioning by tag would make the deck worse.

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alphabet or script deck · A1-C1 · 2,300 notes · no audio · updated December 2017

Characters: the kanji of the kodansha kanji learner's course.

A thorough 2,300-kanji companion to the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course (KLC) book that is worth studying if you own the book, but it teaches characters, not Japanese as a language.

Verdict

The deck does its one job well. Each note holds a kanji, a keyword, on'yomi and kun'yomi, and key vocabulary separated from other vocabulary. The recognition card hides the readings behind a hint, and the recall card goes from keyword to kanji. The 23 subdecks of 100 follow the book's numbering. The opening is sensible: 日, 一 to 九, then 月, 火, 水, 木, 金, 土, with example words like 日曜日 and 二十日 that reuse kanji you have already met. In the sample, the Japanese and readings look reliable. The one clear error is 迷惑 glossed as "trouble, announce", and there is a stray space in "30, 000 yen". The weaknesses are structural. The measurements show 0 of 2,299 notes are sentences and 0 of 2,300 carry audio, so you never see a kanji in a sentence or hear a reading. Vocabulary follows the book's order, not word frequency. In the sample, 今 (#228), 時 (#383) and 右 (#402) come in the 200s to 400s. The deck covers only 32% of the 1,000 most common words on the frequency list, because it teaches kanji compounds rather than function words. Later levels fill with rare words. 貪る and 預る are far from common, and several late notes repeat the same word in both key vocab and vocab (#1151 威嚇する, #1159 貪る, #1314 穂先).

Use it if you own the KLC book and want to learn to recognize and recall kanji in the book's order, with readings and a vocabulary list for each character. It suits someone who already has a grammar and listening route elsewhere and wants a drilled kanji layer on top. Do not use it as a first or only Japanese deck, and do not expect it to teach you to understand or produce sentences. Skip it if you want frequency-ordered vocabulary, spoken-language practice, or a deck that works without the book; its own description says it is meant to be used with the book.

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vocabulary list · A1-B1 · 1,000 notes · no audio · updated March 2018

Script: reading practice on words written in katakana.

A 1,000-card katakana reading drill of loanwords that does that one job competently, but it is not a general vocabulary deck and is worth studying only if katakana reading is your weak spot.

Verdict

The deck does what its description promises. Each card shows one katakana word in large type, with an English gloss on the back, and most sampled words (アイスクリーム, マヨネーズ, スピーカー) can be decoded into the English word they came from, so the gloss doubles as a check on your reading. Occasional notes cover extended katakana (ティ, ファ, ウォ, ヴァ), and the end of the deck adds company names, onomatopoeia and animal names, which is useful exposure. The weaknesses are structural. The order follows the kana table instead of frequency or difficulty, and it appears to restart at ア around card 630 in the sample. Rare words come early: アラカルト is card 24 and アスピリン is card 15, while イヌ and ネコ come last. The deck teaches 39 of the 1,000 most common Japanese words, and 553 of its words were flagged as rare for where they sit. There are no sentences, no audio and no images, and a few gloss typos ("annoucement", "rehersal", "Portugese").

Use it if you already read hiragana, can name the katakana, and want volume of reading practice so that katakana stops being slow. It is a supplement. You will not build useful general vocabulary from it, and it does nothing for grammar, listening or speaking. If you do not yet know the katakana at all, skip it for now: the cards give no readings or romaji, so you would be guessing with no way to check the sound.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 104 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2014

Script: the kana syllabaries.

A complete, accurate 104-card katakana drill with audio on every card that opens with the hardest characters first, so it is worth studying only after you reorder it.

Verdict

The content is correct and complete in the sample: every katakana-to-hiragana pair I could check is right, including ヲ/を, ヂ/ぢ and ヅ/づ, and the dakuten, handakuten and yōon groups are all present. Each card shows one character, asks you to type the hiragana, grades you, then plays audio, which forces recall instead of recognition. The weak point is the order. Cards 1 to 33 are all yōon digraphs in scrambled order (ヒャ, ニャ, ギャ, ヒュ, チャ), and the basic characters ア, イ, ウ do not appear until card 34. ケ also sits last at card 104, away from its basic-row siblings. Nothing connects the cards to a word, a sentence or a loanword, and the card depends on a font you must download. The stylesheet also has an invalid color value ("light green").

Use this if you can already read hiragana, since typing it is the task, and you want a fast, accurate way to learn katakana shapes and sounds. Plan to reorder the new cards first. Skip it if you do not know hiragana yet, or if you want to practice katakana in real loanwords. It teaches the script only and no vocabulary at all.

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mixed · unclear · 25,387 notes · no audio · updated July 2016

Characters: kanji readings, with statistics on each reading.

A 25,387-card kanji-reading and compound-word drill with per-kanji reading statistics; useful as a reading-pattern reference, but not a deck to learn Japanese from.

Verdict

The deck's strength is its reading data. Kanji cards such as 務 show how often each reading appears (む 97.44%, つと 2.56%), and word cards break each compound into per-kanji readings with On/Kun labels and percentages, as on 色覚 (しき 13.25%) or 初孫 (うい 8.47%). In the sample I found no wrong readings or glosses. What it lacks is nearly everything else: there are no sentences (78 of 25,263 measured notes have four or more words), no audio, no images, and no grammar. Order does not follow frequency. The opening cards are 折り返し, 変節, 選る and 種馬, and 83% of the words arriving in part 1 sit beyond rank 5,000 on the frequency list. Common function words like これ, まだ and とても never appear. Glosses come straight from JMdict, so cards like 折り返し carry eight senses, and 禁固, 非番 and 節減 are obscure entries that turn up early.

Use this if you already read some Japanese and want to see which kanji readings are the norm and which are exceptions, or if you want a large pool of compounds to mine after learning the kanji from another source. Skip it if you are a beginner who needs basic vocabulary, listening practice, or any sentence context, or if you expect a course that moves from common to rare words. Treat it as a supplement to a real course, not a primary deck.

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alphabet or script deck · A1-C1 · 2,200 notes · no audio · updated November 2015

Characters: heisig's keyword-and-story method.

A complete Heisig-order set of 2,200 kanji with stroke diagrams and stories, but no sentences, no audio, and a default card that shows only the kanji and its keyword; worth studying only if you want a kanji-first, keyword-based method and will edit the template first.

Verdict

The deck does one thing carefully. Each kanji is one note, in the order of Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, so components come before the kanji that use them. In the sample, 日 and 月 come before 明 (sun plus moon), and 青 at #1654 is followed by 精, 請, 情, 晴, 清 and 静 at #1655-1660, each built on it. Every note carries a stroke diagram, a constituent list, JLPT and Jouyou grade, and in the sample a Heisig story plus two community stories. The weaknesses are about what the learner actually sees and learns. In the sample there are no sentences and no audio, and the card template as shipped shows only the kanji on the front and the keyword, diagram and constituents on the back. The readings and the Heisig and Koohii story lines are commented out of the template, and {{myStory}} is empty. The words lists are raw dictionary dumps, with 142 entries on 一 and some visible errors: 地形 is given as じぎょう, 悪日 as あくび, and 卒直 appears under 卒. 万歳 is glossed 'strolling comic dancer', which is the gloss for まんざい, not the cheer ばんざい. The order ignores frequency. 吾 and 朋, both name-only kanji, sit at #17 and #19, ahead of 明, and JLPT 1 kanji such as 唱 and 晶 appear in the first 30. By the end, kanji like 遵, 屯 and 癒 have a story but no word examples at all. The measurements agree: the median JLPT_5 note sits at 14% of the deck and the median JLPT_1 note at 56%, yet in 42% of cross-level pairs the higher level comes first.

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kanji deck (one card per kanji, with drawing and vocabulary) · A1-C1 (JLPT N5-N1 kanji, ordered by WaniKani level 1-60) · 2,438 notes · no audio · updated June 2026

Characters: drawing kanji stroke by stroke.

A careful 2,438-card kanji handwriting deck that follows WaniKani order and is worth studying as a drawing companion, but it is not a course and teaches no sentences, grammar or audio.

Verdict

The deck does one job well. Each card shows an English meaning, a stroke count, related kanji and a gloss list of vocabulary with the target kanji replaced by a placeholder, so you recall and draw the kanji. The back gives the kanji, a stroke diagram, readings, a collapsed vocabulary list with furigana, and phonetic-component data such as 詳 (言 + 羊). In the sample the readings and glosses are accurate. The order is WaniKani's: numbers and basics first (一, 二, 人, 大, 山, 川), then increasingly rare kanji, and 999-level extras at the end such as 鵜, 痙 and 琲. Following that order is a sound choice. The JLPT tags do not offer a better path, so I judged the default order. The weaknesses come from the format. There are no sentences, no audio and no grammar. The vocabulary lists mix common words with rare compounds and place names (淀川, 梓川, 平壌, 浄瑠璃), and the deck teaches only about a third of the 1,000 most frequent Japanese words. The early order is also uneven: 刀 (N1) and 丁 appear at WK level 2 beside basics. Card 一 puts about 80 gloss entries on a single front, which is a lot to scan. This is a sample, so the details of individual cards may differ from what I saw.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 123 notes · audio on 100% · updated September 2015

Script: the kana syllabaries.

A 123-card katakana recognition deck with audio on every card and stroke diagrams for the basic and voiced characters, worth using only after you fix a handful of errors and one card-order problem.

Verdict

The deck teaches the script in a sensible order: the basic kana first, then the voiced and p-sound characters, then the digraphs (キャ, ジュ), then the foreign-sound extensions (フィ, ティ, ウィ). Each card adds one character. All 123 notes carry audio and the 71 basic and voiced characters have a stroke diagram. The back of each card also shows the matching hiragana, which helps if you already read it. The problems are real but small. ア, id 1 and the first character of the script, is the last card in study order, so you start at イ. In the sample, the ぺ note has its katakana and hiragana fields swapped (katakana: ぺ, hiragana: ペ). Several extended-kana romaji readings are wrong or nonstandard. ウォ is 'wo', the same as ヲ. トゥ is 'to', the same as ト. ドゥ is 'do', the same as ド. ヴ is 'bu', the same as ブ. ファ is 'fwa' and ヴェ is 'bwe'. The template also has a broken tag, `<br/` with no closing bracket, which probably swallows the front hint, and every back shows 'My hint:' even though only the ア note has a hint ('tere'). The deck gives you no words or sentences, so it only gets you to recognizing characters. Most of what I read is a sample of about 90 of the 123 notes, so there may be more errors in the notes I did not see.

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alphabet or script deck · A1-B1 · 214 notes · no audio · updated September 2026

Characters: the 214 radicals.

A carefully built 214-radical deck with stroke-order animation and a rough usefulness ordering, worth studying as a kanji-component aid but not as a way to learn Japanese.

Verdict

The deck does its narrow job well. Each note gives the glyph, the Kangxi number, the stroke count, an English keyword, the kana readings and the variant forms, and the back adds stroke-order playback and example kanji. The order is a real design choice: in the sample, 水, 人, 手, 木, 心, 口 and 言 come first, and rare radicals such as 鼎, 鬯, 黹 and 龠 sit at the end. The weaknesses are in the content. The order is only loose (大 is #29 and 小 is #71), and example lists mix common kanji with obscure ones, for example 手 listing 掣 and 擧, 黄 listing 黊 and 黌, and 鼻 listing 鼼 鼽 鼿. Many late notes have few or no examples, such as 黄, 支, 鼻, 韭, 龠, 鼎, 黹 and 夊. The Recall card shows only the English keyword, and some keywords collide. 自 and 己 are both 'oneself', and 髟, 毛 and 彡 all mean some kind of hair. There are no sentences, no audio, no images and no mnemonics.

Use this if you are learning kanji and want to recognize and write the common components, read the radical names (さんずい, ごんべん, しんにょう) and find characters in a dictionary. The first 100 or so notes are the useful part. Skip it if you want vocabulary, grammar, listening or reading practice, because none of that is here. Also skip it if you expect the full 214 to pay off, since the tail is mostly radicals you will rarely meet in everyday Japanese.

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kanji course (Heisig Remembering the Kanji with stories, stroke diagrams and readings) · A1-C1 · 2,200 notes · no audio · updated July 2018

Characters: heisig's keyword-and-story method.

A full Heisig Remembering the Kanji deck (2,200 kanji, keyword to written kanji, stroke diagrams and two stories per card) that is worth studying only if you want to learn to write and recognize kanji, not Japanese itself.

Verdict

The deck does one job well: the front shows an English keyword and you recall the kanji. The back gives the stroke diagram, lesson and frame numbers, the primitives it is built from, Heisig's story, a community story and the readings. Order follows Heisig's primitives, so cards like 明 (sun, moon) and 晴 (sun, blue) build on shapes you already met. It also has weaknesses. In the sample there are no sentences, no audio and no grammar, and the cards never show which compound words to learn. Order ignores frequency: 吾, 呂 and 旭 (all Names-grade kanji) appear within the first 25 cards, 栃 and 蛍 turn up around card 553, and the deck ends on zodiac signs (丑, 卯, 巳). The back is a long single column. At least one shown story is crude (#920 巨).

Use it if you are committed to the RTK method and will make your own stories, or have already bought the book and want it in Anki. You will get kanji you can write and tell apart, which makes later vocabulary study easier. Do not use it as your main Japanese course, and do not expect it to teach you to read, hear or speak. It is also a poor fit if you want the most useful kanji first, since the order is built for shape logic, not for frequency or level.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 87 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2015

Script: the kana syllabaries.

A careful 87-card hiragana deck that teaches kana by visual similarity, with a short example word after most characters, and worth studying if you are a true beginner who wants to learn to read hiragana.

Verdict

The deck does one job well. It orders characters by how they look, so し leads to と, と to ひ, わ to ね, and さ to き. Most characters get a short follow-up word built only from kana you already know, such as heya, nani, hai, and ame ('rain' and 'candy', each with its own recording). Every card has audio, and nearly every card has a kana image. The mnemonics are often vivid, for example か as a mosquito, こい as a carp pond, and ち as blood. The cards are small recall tasks, and the measurements show no duplicate prompts. The weaknesses are the shape of the deck. It has no sentences, so you practice reading single kana and short words, not text. The card is a plain Front/Back note with a romaji prompt, and many backs carry long mnemonic paragraphs while others are empty (for example #8, #11, #24). A few example words are marginal (kechi, kesa, yakkan, utsu), and there are small typos such as 'り ro い'. The frequency figures do not apply to a script deck, so do not read them as a verdict on its vocabulary.

Use this if you can read no Japanese and want a structured, audio-backed way to learn the 46 basic hiragana, especially if you like visual mnemonics and learn well when each character is tied to the one before it. Skip it if you already read hiragana, if you want a vocabulary or sentence deck, or if you want to study grammar. It also stops at the basic kana: nothing in the sample covers voiced kana, small kana, or combination sounds, so you need another resource for those.

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alphabet or script deck · A1-A2 · 317 notes · no audio · updated October 2016

Characters: writing the kanji taught in genki.

A bare, Genki-ordered list of 317 single kanji for writing practice: sound as a companion to the textbook, but too thin to learn kanji from by itself.

Verdict

The deck does one narrow thing cleanly. Each card gives an English meaning plus on'yomi and kun'yomi readings and asks you to produce the kanji, shown at 72px on the back. In the sample the order follows Genki lessons 3 to 23 (numbers like 一 and 二, then 日, 本, 人, 月, 火, 水, and later 春, 秋, 冬, 花), and the meanings and readings I checked match the kanji. What it lacks is any context: no example words, no sentences, no audio, no images, and 316 of 316 notes are single characters. The front's three lines are unlabeled, so you have to know that the first is the meaning, the second on'yomi and the third kun'yomi. Some readings are fragments (四 shows し and よん、よ、よっ, 上 shows うえ、のぼ), and some glosses are loose, such as 昼 as 'noon, daytime' next to 午 as 'noon'. Some prompts are also ambiguous: 前 and 後 are only 'before' and 'after', so a plausible wrong answer is easy.

Use it if you are working through Genki I and II and want a drill for handwriting each kanji from its meaning, alongside a stroke-order reference. The author says as much and points to a separate kanji-words deck for vocabulary, which this file does not include. Skip it if you want to read Japanese in context, learn vocabulary, practice grammar, or train listening. Because the front shows readings, you can sometimes answer from a reading alone without recalling the meaning, and nothing here teaches how a kanji behaves inside words.

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mixed · B1-C1 · 2,300 notes · no audio · updated August 2022

Characters: the kanji of the kodansha kanji learner's course.

A 2,300-note kanji deck that mirrors the Kodansha KLC book, worth studying only if you own the book and want kanji readings and compounds, not sentences, audio or grammar.

Verdict

Each note gives one kanji with an English keyword, on and kun readings, and up to eight compounds with furigana and glosses, in the book's order. The opening is easy to follow: 一, 二, 三, 十, then 日, 月, 火, 水, 木, 金, with number and weekday words as compounds. Recognition and Recall cards come from each note, and the vocabulary table stays hidden until you hover or tap. The weaknesses are real, though. The measurements show 0 of 2,300 notes with audio and no sentences, only words and short phrases. Order follows the book's grapheme logic rather than word frequency: in the sample 汐 (#268) comes before 時 (#383), and 尚 (#184) before 今 (#228). Only 32% of the 1,000 most common words on the frequency list are taught, and by the last tenth 89% of new words fall outside the top 5,000 or off the list. Many compounds are dictionary curiosities such as 蟹工船 and 虹霓. Early cards also use kanji you have not met, for example 三日 前 on the 日 card. The sample shows slips: 迷惑 glossed 'trouble, announce', 格納する glossed only 'house', 泣き声 listed twice on 泣, and on 恩 the entry text sits in the English field of an empty slot (vocab5eng). Stray marks such as 'x' and '¹' also appear.

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alphabet or script deck · Kanken grades 10 to 2 (all 2,136 jōyō kanji), roughly elementary school through upper secondary and beyond · 2,136 notes · no audio · updated December 2023

Characters: writing the jouyou kanji, in japanese only.

A carefully built one-card-per-kanji writing-practice deck for all 2,136 jōyō kanji, written entirely in Japanese, and worth studying once you fix its starting order.

Verdict

In the sample, the card design and the data are strong. The front shows three compounds with the target kanji blanked, for example 列 as 〇[れつ]・〇車[れっしゃ]・行〇[ぎょうれつ], so the furigana tells you which word to write. The back adds readings, a meaning with compounds, the radical, the Kanken level and the stroke order, and every note has a stroke image. Readings, compounds, stroke counts and radicals were almost all correct in the sample. Slips are few: 申 lists 「康申」 where 庚申 is meant, and the 憬 card uses name entries (憬子[けいこ]（名前）, 憬人[けいと]（名前）) as example words. The weaknesses are structural. The default study order is rotated: it opens at index 401 with Kanken level 8 (列, 面, 悲), climbs through levels 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.5 and 2, and only then reaches the easiest kanji (十, 目, 月 at level 10 and 万 at level 9), which are the last 400 cards. There are no sentences, no audio, and the only test is recalling the written kanji from a word you are told the reading of.

Use this deck if you already read Japanese definitions comfortably and want to drill handwriting of jōyō kanji, especially for Kanken preparation or JLPT-style written recall. Skip it if you are a beginner who needs English glosses, listening practice, or reading-in-context practice. It trains writing from a known reading, so it teaches little about recognizing kanji or how they sound. Meanings are terse dictionary entries; 度 carries eight senses plus a second pronunciation group, and the rarer kanji get obscure examples such as 牛津[オックスフォード] under 津.

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mixed · A1-B2 · 1,757 notes · no audio · updated January 2019

Characters: the kanjidamage mnemonic method.

KanjiDamage is a 1,757-kanji mnemonic course whose component-first order and crude humor suit some learners and put off others; it teaches no sentences, grammar or audio.

Verdict

The deck does one thing well: it gives you a memory hook for each kanji's shape, meaning and onyomi. 子 carries "That poor child ーSHE has lived a total of one year!", and 王 carries "OH shit, here comes the king!!". Components are listed on every note, and the lookalike tables separate near-twins such as 早/古 and 技/枝. Each kanji also comes with jukugo that have a breakdown line ("一 (one) + 人 (person) = 一人") and a 1-5 star usefulness rating. The weaknesses are structural. The order follows radical-building, not frequency, so 姦 ("rape") is note 8, 叶 is 17, 昆 is 25 and 旦 is 30, while 大丈夫 is the last note and 後 is note 1235. There are no sentences, no grammar and no audio, and word-level vocabulary appears only as jukugo glosses. Quality is uneven: placeholders like "XXX", "にzzz" and "tpo", a 遅 header that says "2 strokes", and blank onyomi on radical-only notes such as the heel and マ cards. The tone is often sexual, violent or politically edgy, and it is part of the mnemonics.

Use it if you already read some Japanese, or are at least comfortable with kana, and want a kanji-recognition and writing course, and a profane, jokey mnemonic style helps you remember rather than distracts you. Skip it if you want conversation, grammar or listening practice, if you need material to share in a classroom or workplace, or if you want the most common words and kanji first. If you do use it, plan on editing the order and suspending a lot of cards.

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kanji deck (Remembering the Kanji order with stories and example words) · A1-C1 · 3,000 notes · no audio · updated April 2016

Characters: heisig's keyword-and-story method.

A 3,000-kanji Heisig RTK 1 and 3 deck with community mnemonic stories and stroke diagrams: worth studying only if you are already committed to the RTK method, and not a way to learn Japanese on its own.

Verdict

The deck delivers what it promises. Each note is one kanji in Heisig frame order, with the keyword on the front (一 'one', 田 'rice field') and on the back the kanji, a stroke GIF, two Koohii stories and on/kun reading lists with example words. The stories often chain from card to card, which is how RTK is meant to work (#1503 令 'orders' leads into 零, 齢, 冷, 領 and 鈴). Every note has an image and no kanji repeats. The weak points are the material around that core. The example-word fields are scraped from a dictionary and contain duplicates (三 【サン】 listed twice, 湧出 three times), glosses cut off with '…', and words that don't contain the kanji at all (六 lists 難しい; 吾 lists 我; 姐 lists 姉). Some entries are obscure (セシウム137 under 七, 'Hodgson's hawk-cuckoo' under 十一). The back of each card is long and flat, so the answer sits above a wall of optional text. There is no audio and no sentences. Some stories are crude or carry stray commentary, such as the crotch chain in #751–760 and 'Edit - Stop starring this piece of crap story! xD.' on 村.

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sentence deck · A1-A2 · 139 notes · audio on 100% · updated May 2022

Numbers drill: numbers and counting.

A focused, well-ordered drill for Japanese numbers and counters built from real anime clips with audio and screenshots, worth studying if you check its readings against a reference as you go.

Verdict

The deck's structure is its strength. It moves from 1-10 to 11-19, tens, hundreds, thousands, then money, time, age and counters like 枚, 本, 匹, 冊, 台 and 回. Each card puts one number or counter on a real line, such as 二千九百円, 十一時二十二分 and 残り十六分, and the back repeats the rule it illustrates, for example 'Four is pronounced irregular with this counter.' Every sampled card has audio and an image. The weakness is accuracy. The sample shows about ten wrong or garbled readings in fields you see. 九十点 is given as きゅじゅうてん and 957円 as きゅひゃくごじゅうなな. 二千五百四十九人 reads ぞんじゅう. 三百六十五日 is せんびゃく in the hiragana and senbyaku in the romaji. 十月 is split into '十 月' and read つき. The 一千百十万円 card has a kanji field that disagrees with its spaced and reading fields. もう一回言って is glossed as 'go there one more time'. For a deck whose whole point is exact readings, that matters, and you cannot trust the kana and romaji without checking.

Use it if you are a beginner who has already finished the first ~1,800 cards of the jlab main deck. You can then read the surrounding sentences and spend your effort on numbers and counters. It suits someone who wants to hear mixed numbers at speed, which is the hardest part of the topic. Skip it if you are starting from zero, because some clips are full sentences with several unfamiliar words (the 日常 apple line has 6 new ones). Skip it too if you need a deck that is correct in every field without checking, or if you want general vocabulary. It teaches 165 words, which is 13% of the top 1,000.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 104 notes · audio on 100% · updated January 2013

Script: the kana syllabaries.

A complete, correctly ordered hiragana recognition deck with audio and a stroke diagram on every card, worth studying if all you need is to learn to read the kana.

Verdict

The deck covers all 104 characters in the standard order: the 46 basic kana (あ, い, う... through ん), then voiced and semi-voiced kana (が to ぽ), then combinations (きゃ to りょ). Every card is one character, and each note in the sample has romaji, an audio field and a stroke-order image. The sampled pairings are correct (し/shi, ち/chi, を/wo, びゅ/byu). The weaknesses are narrow: the front shows only the kana, so the deck tests recognition and never recall or writing, and ぢ and づ are romanized as 'dzi' and 'dzu', which is not the usual convention. There are no example words, so the frequency figures say little. The 89 'words' and 4% coverage of the top 1,000 are mostly Janome reading kana as words.

Use it if you are a complete beginner who wants a first pass at reading hiragana, with sound and stroke order on the back of each card. It is a poor fit if you already read kana, if you want to learn through words or sentences, or if you need katakana. Treat it as a short first step, not a course: once you can read the characters, move to a vocabulary or sentence deck.

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alphabet or script deck · A1 · 122 notes · audio on 100% · updated January 2023

Script: the kana syllabaries.

A two-way hiragana and katakana drill with audio on every note and Tofugu mnemonics for the 46 basic kana, worth studying if you are learning the scripts and nothing more.

Verdict

The deck does one job well: it teaches the kana in the standard order (basic kana, then voiced and p-sounds, then digraphs, then foreign-sound kana like ファ and ティ) with one new item per note. Every note has audio, and the 46 basic kana carry mnemonics that cross-reference confusable shapes, for example the ぬ/ね/れ/わ/め group ("Nelly the cat… it has a loop at the end for the tail") and ソ/ツ/シ/ン ("vertical means it's needles"). Those cross-references are the strongest teaching in the sample. The weaknesses are narrower. In the sample, note #70 has its two script fields swapped (hiragana field ペ, katakana field ぺ), so that card shows the wrong script on each side. From the voiced kana onward the notes drop the mnemonics, and the digraph and extended notes have only kana, rōmaji and audio, with some of the last notes showing one audio file instead of two. No kana appears in a word or phrase, so you learn shapes and sounds with no context.

Use this if you are a true beginner who needs to read hiragana and katakana before starting a textbook or a vocabulary deck. It also suits you if you want both scripts on one note with male and female audio. Skip it if you want vocabulary, sentences, or any grammar. The frequency-list figures (49 of the top 2,000 words) mostly reflect how a tokenizer splits single kana, not real vocabulary, so they say little about this deck. Treat it as a short first step and move on once you can read the kana.

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vocabulary list · A2-B1 (JLPT N4) · 180 notes · no audio · updated August 2015

Characters: the n4 kanji from one workbook.

A 180-kanji JLPT N4 drill with stroke-order images but no sentences or audio, and with enough data errors that it works only as a supplement to the Nihongo Challenge book.

Verdict

The deck is one kanji per note, each with on and kun readings, an English meaning and a stroke-order image, and it generates a Reading card and a Writing card from each note. That is a sound way to drill recognition and recall of individual characters, and the Reading card is easy to use: a large kanji on the front, then meaning, readings and example-word readings on the back. The weaknesses are in the content. There are no sentences, no audio, and example compounds appear on only some notes (for instance 市, 村, 暗い and 弱い have none). The compounds that do appear often use kanji the deck teaches much later: 説明 on 明るい at note 5 (説 is note 173), and 勉強 on 強い at note 9 (勉 is note 143). The data is also uneven. 用 gives its kun reading as もし（いる） instead of もち（いる）, and 重 has the on reading ジユウ with a full-size ユ. 便 lists べん and びん in the Kun field, 弱 has じゃく in hiragana, the Kanji field is sometimes a bare character (市) and sometimes a word with okurigana (明るい, 元々), and some notes carry leftovers such as an Italian aside on 銀 and a typo in "exhist".

Use it if you are working through the Nihongo Challenge N4 kanji chapters and want a quick reading-and-writing review of characters you have already met in the book, and you are willing to fix typos as you go. Do not use it as a first source for vocabulary, grammar or reading practice, or if you need to hear the words, because the cards give you almost no context for any word. The kanji numbering in the sample starts at 117 and skips some numbers, and the order is not strictly numeric (note 210 sits before 201). It looks like part of the book's list, not a complete N4 set, so do not assume it covers everything you need for the exam.

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kanji deck (Heisig/RTK order) with readings, example words and mnemonics · A1-C2 · 3,787 notes · no audio · updated August 2026

Characters: every jouyou, jinmeiyou and jlpt kanji in heisig's order.

A 3,787-kanji Remembering the Kanji (5th edition) deck with readings, example words, mnemonics and stroke data on every note, worth studying only if you are following RTK on purpose and have other sources for sentences, grammar and listening.

Verdict

The deck does one job carefully: each kanji becomes a recognition card and a recall card in book order. The sampled notes carry correct on'yomi and kun'yomi, a keyword, components, community stories ("Mr. T" for the 人 radical, "Jiminy Cricket" for 禺) and a short word list such as 儀式, 礼儀, 行儀. The recall front asks from the English keyword, with a hint button that starts at the radical, so the card is clear. The cost is the material. The deck has no sentences (0 of 3,729 measured notes), no audio and no images. Its order follows RTK's shared components, not usefulness, so 冒, 晶 and 呂 appear within the first 25 notes and the deck ends on 鰌, 鮃 and 鯰. Example words are raw dictionary entries, often rare ones (内踝, 呉須, 猿猴捉月), and 47% of notes lack a field most notes fill. In the closing run the Examples field is empty on every note. A handful of reading fields are malformed, for example 諤 with "ガク あご" as its on'yomi and 揉 with "ジュウ も.める".

Use it if you already work through RTK, or have decided to learn writing and meaning of kanji before vocabulary, and you want stroke order, readings and mnemonics in one place. Skip it if you want to learn to read or speak Japanese in a way that builds comprehension step by step. The kanji reach you in an order unrelated to the words you meet, and nothing on the cards shows a kanji working in a sentence. Beginners who want a Japanese-first route should use a vocabulary or sentence deck and treat this one as a side reference.

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