JA Sensei: Learn Japanese JLPT

RaphaelW

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this app

JA Sensei is a complete and structured method for learning Japanese, from beginner to advanced level.

Since 2011, JA Sensei has supported learners with rich, progressive content that is regularly improved: lessons, kana, kanji, vocabulary, grammar, conjugation, listening comprehension, Japanese culture, quizzes, and review tools. This content has been carefully developed over the years, checked and validated by native Japanese speakers.

JA Sensei helps you build confidence in all essential skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking), while helping you understand Japanese cultural codes to avoid common mistakes.

Why choose JA Sensei?

✓ An app specialized in Japanese, designed for this language and its unique features

✓ A clear and progressive learning path, suitable for beginners as well as more advanced learners

✓ Audio recorded by native Japanese speakers, with no text-to-speech

✓ Smart reviews with spaced repetition to help you memorize more effectively over time

✓ A large part of the content can be used offline after downloading

✓ Original and varied exercises to turn your knowledge into automatic reflexes

Lessons, kana, and kanji

Progress step by step with lessons structured around dialogues, vocabulary, grammar, exercises, and cultural pages.

✓ Dialogues and clear explanations to learn in a natural context

✓ Exercises and quizzes to validate what you have learned at each step

✓ Hiragana and katakana with phonetic information and audio

✓ More than 6,300 kanji with readings, meanings, examples, and stroke order

✓ Search by radical, reading, meaning, JLPT level, Jōyō, and handwritten input

✓ Memory Words, composition analysis, and a writing tool to help you memorize kanji more effectively

Vocabulary, dialogues, stories, and listening

Learn Japanese in context through words, sentences, dialogues, and stories with native audio, vocabulary, and grammar explanations.

✓ Thousands of Japanese words organized by topic and JLPT level

✓ More than 17,000 example sentences to understand words in context

✓ A phrasebook with 900 essential expressions to prepare for travel

✓ 150 dialogues to understand Japanese in natural conversations

✓ 30 reading stories to make progress with lively and accessible texts

✓ Listening comprehension exercises with illustrated situations and several difficulty levels

Grammar, conjugation, and advanced tools

Deepen your understanding of Japanese with clear explanations and practical tools to analyze the language.

✓ Hundreds of grammar sheets with examples organized by JLPT level

✓ Japanese particles explained with many uses and examples

✓ Verb and adjective conjugation, from basic forms to advanced forms

✓ 45 Japanese counters with examples, illustrated objects, and exercises

Japanese culture

Learning Japanese also means understanding the culture that comes with it. JA Sensei explains Japanese habits, behaviors, and cultural codes through real-life situations to help you avoid mistakes and communicate more naturally.

Ratings and reviews

I like this app, but there is an occasional issue that is quite vexing. When writing some characters, they're almost always marked as being incorrect even if I trace them exactly as depicted. Ultimately, when I get it "correct," the final result can be skewed and distorted. Sometimes, this gets fixed in an update, but then a formerly correctly recognized character breaks. Also, the "retake review quiz" feature never works. It just says that there are no items left to review.

Wow, I wish I'd downloaded this first when I started learning Japanese! All the grammar and syntax and such are laid out where I can easily read them and take a quick quiz, instead of having to listen to someone explain things or watch a video. That really helps me to process at my own pace! Still a little fuzzy about what to do with "points," and a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of things to explore, but overall, I'm impressed!

I've been watching the development of this for years. Its solid design, impressively comprehensive, and useful without having to make purchases. The donation based membership cost provides functions that need server support only, and its the work of (as far as I know) one man. If you are serious about learning Japanese, it is the singular source you need to pass all proficiency exam levels.