Typing is the fastest way to actually learn kana — most learners skip it

If you're learning Japanese, you've probably spent an afternoon staring at a hiragana chart. あ, い, う, え, お — fine. か, き, く, け, こ — got it. By the end of the hour you can recognize all 46 characters when you see them in order.

Then you open a real Japanese sentence and freeze. You recognize the shapes, but your brain still needs two seconds per character to convert け to "ke".

Recognition and recall are different skills. Charts train the first. Typing trains the second — and it's the one that actually makes you fluent.

The problem with chart memorization

Kana charts are great for introduction. They're terrible for retention. Here's why:

• You read them in a fixed order (あいうえお), so you memorize the sequence, not the characters.
• You get no output practice — no moment where you must produce つ from memory.
• You never build the motor memory that ties a character to your fingers.

The result: recognition without recall. You can read a chart, but you can't read a sign, a menu, or a tweet at speed.

Why typing is the lowest-friction drill

I think typing is the most burden-free way to drill kana. Zero friction, maximum repetition:

• No setup. Every device has a keyboard. No flashcards to shuffle, no app to open, no internet required after load.
• Forced recall. When you see つ and have to type it, your brain produces the answer. That's the whole skill.
• Instant feedback. You know immediately whether you got it right. No grading, no waiting.
• Motor memory. Your fingers learn the pattern too. After a few sessions, き stops being "a character I recognize" and becomes "ki, the one my fingers type".

And here's the part that matters: what you practice is exactly what you do in real life. When you actually type Japanese — a search, a chat message, a sentence in your SRS app — you're doing the same task. You're not learning a game skill, you're learning the skill.

The romaji trap: shi, chi, tsu — and why they're wrong for typing

Here's a subtle thing most learners miss. On a real Japanese IME, romaji input doesn't use the "textbook" romanization:

• し is typed as si, not "shi"
• ち is typed as ti, not "chi"
• つ is typed as tu, not "tsu"
• ふ is typed as hu, not "fu"
• しゃ is sya, not "sha"

If you drill kana with "shi/chi/tsu" (the Hepburn romanization you see in textbooks), you're practicing a mapping you'll never actually use. Sit down at a Japanese keyboard layout and type "shi" for し — nothing happens. You need "si".

That's why the site I built uses the IME-friendly input. What you practice on the screen is exactly what comes out when you type in real life. No translation layer, no relearning — the first time you type し in a real chat, your fingers already know.

So I built a free tool: narau.site

narau.site is a free, no-signup Japanese practice site built around this idea:

• Kana typing drills — hiragana and katakana, with the IME-friendly romaji (si/ti/tu/hu/sya...)
• Kana charts — clean reference charts when you need to look one up
• TTS audio — every kana and word page reads aloud, so you connect sound → character → key
• Vocabulary pages — thousands of word pages, each with audio, so you keep the same typing-and-listening loop as you grow past kana

It's built with Next.js, statically generated for speed, and it works on any device with a keyboard. No account, no paywall, no ads — just practice.

Try it: 3 minutes is enough to feel the difference

Open narau.site, pick hiragana, and run the typing drill for three minutes. You'll notice something almost immediately: after the first few rounds, your fingers start producing the characters before your conscious brain finishes reading them. That's the recall you're actually trying to build.

If you're already past kana, try the katakana drill — most learners are far weaker there, and it's the fastest way to find out.

What I'd tell my past self

Don't memorize kana passively. Drill it actively, with the mapping you'll actually use in real life. Ten minutes of typing a day for a week beats an afternoon with a chart, every time.

If you've got feedback, ideas, or a favorite kana drill of your own — I'd love to hear it. And if typing practice turns out to work for you, it's free forever, so use it freely.

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Narau (習う) means "to learn" in Japanese. Which, fittingly, is what the site is for.