These are the best Japanese apps for learning Kanji. Hopefully someday we'll see some great calibur ones from Japanese publishers that are on the Nintendo DS.

Kanji $1 2,040 kanji JPT levels 1-4. Lets you quiz yourself on kanji. Tapping the screen reveals reading/meaning and gives two example words. When you feel you've mastered a paticular kanji mark it in the upper right circle which will put a blue check mark. When you shake the iphone it'll shuffle the kanji cards and restart. You have the option to show only what you haven't mastered or show them all. Creating your own lists is possible. You can simple browse the JLPT lists or search by either meaning, kanji via type in or write (with Chinese recognition enabled).

Kanji Flip $6 2,230 Kanji is a flashcard based program. Has JPLT levels 1 through 4. Also has kana (hiragana / katakana). Turn on Browse mode to quickly flip through the kanjis to learn them. Turn off browse mode to enter Quiz mode. Tap white space on screen to reveal meaning / reading and two example words. You answer if you got it Right or Wrong. Choosing Wrong flags that paticular kanji and it'll be coming up again and again till you feel you've mastered it and hit Right a two or three times.

KanjiPop $2 2,000+ kanji. It's a quiz with 16 kanji per level that is timed. In all there are 127 levels. To advance to next level you must pass the previous level no skipping ahead allowed. Time left in game is displayed on the orange bar on bottom. Gives you a little over a minute. If you run out of time you can start on the same level you were at or you can press the minus button to revert to previous levels. If you have hints enabled in options when you press the wrong answer it'll reveal the meaning of the one you pressed. Very fun way to quiz yourself on kanji. Would like to see an option to go to the main menu during a quiz in case you want to change options quickly.

ShinKanji $6 6,357 Kanjis with 2,300 animated stroke order kanjis demo lite and demo search. This shows the kanji with the readings and meanings and tapping on greyed out kanji will popup a bigger sized kanji. Pressing play button will animate stroke order. If available it show kanjis used to form this kanji. Has basically six modes which I'll cover below.

Compound samples major update includes compound kanji (words). Each compound word is hyperlinked which you can click on. Above I clicked on ambulance and it'll display the card showing kanji in blue, Readings and Meanings. Furthermore you can click on any of those three blue kanji to further study individual kanjis. Compound samples is a huge huge huge invaluable study tool.
Settings pretty much self-explanatory. Choose to dispaly en (English) es (Spanish) fr (French) or ge (German) readings or not.

Draw lets you use the a Japanese handwriting recognition (not the built-in iphone's Chinese one). Thus it has a bigger draw area, can undo/redo mistakes and obviously returns a larger number of suggested results. My wife who is Japanese really was impressed with this one as she is always cussing up a storm about the Chinese one.
Radicals let you look common radicals up to 17 strokes. You can add as many as you wish and it'll search any kanji that contains all those radicals. Press x to clear radical lookup and start fresh.
Meaning you can search for in English or the other languages if you wish.

Reading you can search by Katakana (on yomi), Hiragana (kun yomi) or Romaji (either one).
Direct input a kanji to look it up. Only first character in word will be searched for.
Lists it has Animals, Body, Colors, Counters, Elements, Jouyou Grades 1 though 7, Numbers, Units, JLPT Levels 1 through 4. For the kanji it'll have meanings in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. Tapping on kanji in upper right corner shows big kanji zoomed in and pressing play button at bottom will animate stroke order of kanji.

Updated March 28, 2009

Back Best Japanese iPhone Apps