Shinobi: Read & Learn Japanese

Shinobi LLC

In-app purchases

About this app

Shinobi: Read & Learn Japanese is the first reading-focused app that lets you grow from absolute beginner (below JLPT N5) all the way to JLPT N1—and beyond—through richly illustrated graded stories, daily easy news, and smart review tools. Instead of memorising lists, you absorb vocabulary, kanji and grammar together, in context.

What makes Shinobi different ?

• Graded illustrated stories – Hundreds of short, level-tagged stories written by native Japanese teachers. Art, dialog and narration evolve as your level rises, keeping difficulty just right.
• Daily easy news – Follow Japanese news with bite-sized articles rewritten for learners; expand your vocabulary while exploring fresh topics every day.
• Multi-input immersion – Each page combines images, audio and clean text. Seeing, hearing and reading at once builds natural comprehension.
• Think-in-Japanese approach – Inline hints keep you inside the language; you understand meaning without bouncing back to your native tongue, training real-time thinking skills.
• Smart review built in – Tap any word or kanji to save it; spaced-repetition decks surface items just before you forget them, so knowledge sticks effortlessly.
• Kanji, grammar and vocab together – No need for separate apps: stories show how kanji, sentence patterns and new words work side-by-side inside a real story.
• Adaptive progression – Toggle Furigana on and Off, hide specific furigana and bookmarks important words.

Why it works

Context-first learning reinforces memory through storyline, visuals and sound.

Micro-chapters (5-20 pages) fit busy schedules and build daily momentum.

Gamified XP and streaks keep motivation high without gimmicks.

Comprehensive coverage means one app for reading, listening and review.

Start your journey today. Install Shinobi: Read & Learn Japanese !

Ratings and reviews

I just finished level two. I already knew the kana and some common kanji, and it let me skip past learning them again. The stories get progressively more difficult, but are still set up in a way that makes it easy to understand how words fit. I'm able to piece together the definition without translating the whole page. I really like that you can subscribe, but you don't need to in order to access the whole app.

The app is pretty nice and easy to use. unlike other language apps, you can get exposed to more coherent mini-stories. I also like that once you feel like you know the hiragana of a kanji, you can hide it so in the future you will only see the kanji by itself. The reason for a 4 star so far is that the premium version of the app is more or less required for any serious learning, otherwise you only get access to 2 stories per day (~10 min). (I did buy a year of premium, the app feels useful).

This is a pretty good app I use it almost daily recently. There was a short while where they were transitioning to more comprehensive quizzes that the app crashed but seems to be stable and improved. What is offered for free with no ads is more than worth the time to try it out. Just a few things I would like to see improved one is the dictionary isn't very extensive sometimes it lacks the definition for the current context. It also only has a definition for the plain verb conjugation.

What’s new

- New Onboarding
- Various Bug Fixes