漢字 Kanji · N4
Kanji here are ordered by usefulness, travel first, not school-grade order and not a textbook list. The question for every character is: how fast does it help you read the world?
Kanji practice on this site is recognition first, checked gently, cards and real words for meeting characters, spotting the ones you've already met inside lessons you can hear, and short recognition quizzes so you can see what has actually stuck.
Characters and compound words always get separate cards. Tap the speaker button on a character card to hear just that character's own reading; a word card like 料理plays the whole word. Turn on furigana to see the readings above the characters. And tap a character card itself to open its detail view: the character up close, with its stroke order drawn out stroke by stroke.
A character card's English line is the character's own meaning when it stands alone as a word. An asterisk (*) marks a character's core meaning, the sense it carries into compound words, rather than a word that stands alone.
See What Stuck
A short recognition check on these characters and the words built from them: readings and meanings, nothing to type, no score. Ten gentle questions.
Phase 2: Kanji From the Lessons
Every kanji that appears in lesson vocabulary, grouped by lesson. Each compound word follows the characters that build it, each on its own card, so you can hear 料, then理, then 料理, never all three tangled on one card.
N4 · Lesson 1 · りょうり Cooking
N4 · Lesson 2 · かいもの Shopping
N4 · Lesson 3 · うんてん Driving
N4 · Lesson 4 · いぬ Dogs
Phase 3: Growing by Level
These cards come from the four original N4 lessons. When the N4 level is rebuilt on its curriculum map, this collection grows along the same ladder, N4's ~300, each one still filtered through the same question: does this character earn its place in your day?
Stroke order diagrams: KanjiVG, shared under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Stuck on Something? Tell Mimi
Feedback goes with the page you were on, so Mimi can find the exact spot. If it was one word or one line, name it below.