Hiragana first, on its own (1–2 weeks), then katakana, then core grammar and your first kanji in parallel, then vocabulary at volume, then real reading and listening, and speaking last. The order is not preference — kanji readings, grammar endings and furigana are all written in hiragana, so starting kanji before kana is learning from a book you cannot open. Skip keigo, pitch accent drills and full handwriting recall for the first six months.
Almost every stalled Japanese learner made the same mistake, and it was not laziness. It was sequence. They started four things at once in week one — kana, kanji, grammar, an anime immersion habit — and each one was slowed by the missing foundations of the others.
Japanese has an unusually strict dependency order. Some things genuinely cannot be learned efficiently before other things. Here is what depends on what, and what that means for your first six months.
The Dependency Chain
Hiragana → Katakana → Core grammar + first kanji, together → Vocabulary at volume → Reading and listening to real material → Output: speaking and writing
You can overlap the later stages freely. The first two are not optional and not reorderable.
Stage 1 — Hiragana (Week 1)
Do this and nothing else. 46 characters. One to two weeks. Everything downstream is built on it: kanji readings are recorded in hiragana, grammar endings are hiragana, furigana is hiragana, dictionaries are ordered by hiragana.
Learn it with mnemonics rather than repetition — き looks like a key, さ like a fish hook — and drill in both directions, because recognizing あ is easy while producing あ is the skill that makes reading fast. Target instant recognition, not “I can work it out.”
Do not start kanji here. A kanji card whose reading you cannot read is a card that teaches you nothing.
Free tool
Drill hiragana and katakana right here in your browser — all 46 base characters plus dakuten and combination kana, in either direction, with the full charts underneath. No signup.
Open the free kana quizStage 2 — Katakana (Week 2)
Same 46 sounds, different shapes. Faster than hiragana because the sound system is already in your head, but expect the look-alike pairs — シ/ツ and ソ/ン — to stay slippery for a while. Study those as pairs deliberately rather than as separate characters.
Katakana pays off immediately: a large share of katakana words are borrowed from English, so you gain vocabulary the moment you can read it. コーヒー, ホテル, レストラン, カメラ are free.
Stage 3 — Core Grammar and First Kanji, in Parallel (Months 1–3)
This is where the sequence stops being linear. Grammar and kanji feed each other, and doing one without the other wastes both.
The grammar to get first, in this order:
- Sentence order. Japanese is subject–object–verb: the verb goes last, always. 私はりんごを食べます = “I apple eat.”
- The core particles — は, が, を, に, で, の. These do the work English does with word order and prepositions. They are the single highest-leverage grammar you will ever learn.
- です / ます polite forms. Get one register right before worrying about the others.
- Verb conjugation basics — present, past, negative, and the て-form, which unlocks a disproportionate number of later patterns.
- い-adjectives vs な-adjectives. Two families that conjugate differently.
The kanji to get first: N5’s ~100 characters, five to ten a day, always attached to real words. Never learn 学 alone — learn it as 学生, 学校, 大学. You get the meaning, both readings and three usable words in the same amount of effort.
Why in parallel? Because grammar without kanji means you can only read children’s text, and kanji without grammar means you can recognize words in sentences you cannot parse. Together, you start reading in month two.
Stage 4 — Vocabulary at Volume (Months 3–12)
Once the grammar skeleton is in place, vocabulary becomes the bottleneck and stays the bottleneck. This is the least glamorous stage and the one that decides whether you get to fluency.
Rough targets: ~800 words for N5, ~1,500 for N4, ~3,750 for N3, ~6,000 for N2. The jump from N3 to N2 is the biggest in the exam and it is almost entirely vocabulary.
Two rules that matter more than any app choice:
- Frequency order beats theme order. A “kitchen vocabulary” list teaches you words for colander and whisk before you know “to use.” See the frequency hack.
- Words, not translations. Learn each word inside an example sentence, so you learn what it collocates with, not just what English word sits next to it.
Stage 5 — Real Input (Month 4 onward)
Flashcards build the parts; only reading and listening assemble them. Start earlier than feels comfortable, with material that is forgiving:
- Reading: manga with furigana → graded readers → NHK Easy News → real articles.
- Listening: slow learner podcasts → anime with Japanese subtitles → anime without → unscripted native conversation.
Expect listening to lag reading by about one level for a long time. That gap is normal and it is fixable, but only by doing listening specifically — reading more will not close it. Kanjijo’s dictation track exists for exactly this: you hear everyday Japanese and rebuild the sentence word by word, which forces you to actually parse the sound stream instead of catching the gist.
Stage 6 — Output (When You Are Ready, Not Before)
Speaking is the one thing you can safely delay, and the one everyone panics about first. You cannot say what you have not learned, so early speaking practice mostly drills the twenty words you already know.
That said, do not delay it to N2 either. A reasonable rule: once you have the て-form, past tense and a few hundred words, start shadowing — speaking along with native audio in real time. It builds pronunciation, rhythm and the muscle memory of Japanese sentence shapes without needing a conversation partner or any courage at all. Kanjijo has a shadowing track for this, alongside conversation lessons where every grammar point appears inside a natural dialogue.
What to Actively Ignore in Your First Six Months
| Skip for now | Why |
|---|---|
| Keigo (honorific speech) | A whole second register. Genuinely needed for work in Japan, useless before N3, and confusing while you are still learning plain forms. |
| Handwriting every kanji | Recall is roughly four times harder than recognition and you need recognition first. Handwrite the characters you personally use. |
| Pitch accent drills | Real, but a refinement. Absorb it from listening; do not build a study system around it in month two. |
| Every reading of every kanji | Learn the common on’yomi and kun’yomi, get the rest from vocabulary. See on’yomi vs kun’yomi. |
| Rare counters and formal writing | N2/N1 material. There are thousands of higher-frequency things to learn first. |
Free tool
Not sure where you stand? Take the free JLPT level test: 25 questions, five per level from N5 to N1, instant result and an explanation after every answer.
Take the free JLPT level testA Realistic First Six Months
| When | Focus | You should be able to |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1–2 | Hiragana, then katakana | Read any Japanese aloud, slowly |
| Month 1 | Core particles, です/ます, first 100 kanji | Parse a simple sentence, read station signs |
| Month 2–3 | て-form, past/negative, ~300 kanji, ~800 words | Read simple manga with furigana (N5 territory) |
| Month 4–6 | Vocabulary volume, first real reading and listening | Hold a basic conversation, follow NHK Easy News (N4) |
That is a pace of fifteen to thirty minutes a day. Faster is possible; it just is not necessary, and the people who sprint through months one and two are heavily over-represented among the people who quit in month four.
What You Actually Get Inside Kanjijo
Kanjijo is one app that covers every part of Japanese, so you are not stitching together five tools. Here is the full list, as of 2026:
Everything in one app · free to start
- Complete kanji, vocabulary and grammar for all five JLPT levels — N5 through N1, in a fixed order with no gaps.
- Exclusive mnemonics written by hand for every kanji and every vocabulary word — not auto-generated, not borrowed from a public deck.
- SRS reviews that schedule each item right before you would forget it, so 10–15 minutes a day is enough.
- OCR camera scanner — point your phone at a menu, sign, manga panel or receipt and Kanjijo reads the Japanese and turns the words into cards.
- Lock screen widget — a new kanji or word every time you pick up your phone.
- Home screen widget — today’s review count and study item, visible without opening anything.
- Interactive test widget — answer a real question straight from the home screen, no app launch needed.
- JLPT reading practice — graded passages with the exact question types the real exam uses.
- JLPT listening practice — native audio exercises per level, including the trap-heavy formats.
- Full JLPT mock exams — timed, section-scored, so you know your weak section before test day.
- Conversation lessons — natural dialogues with every grammar point actually used in context, not bolted on.
- Shadowing — speak along with native audio and hear yourself against the model.
- Dictation — listen to real everyday Japanese and rebuild the sentence word by word.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I learn first in Japanese?
Hiragana, on its own, for one to two weeks. Every later step depends on it: kanji readings, grammar endings, furigana and dictionary order are all written in hiragana. Katakana comes second, then core grammar and your first kanji together.
Should I learn grammar or kanji first?
Together, once you have both kana scripts. Grammar without kanji leaves you able to read only children's material, and kanji without grammar leaves you recognizing words inside sentences you cannot parse. Running both from month one is what lets you start reading in month two.
How long before I can read manga in Japanese?
With around 300 kanji and 800 words, roughly three months at a steady pace, you can read shōnen manga slowly, because it prints furigana over every kanji. Manga aimed at older readers drops furigana and needs closer to N3.
When should I start speaking Japanese?
Once you have the て-form, past tense and a few hundred words, usually around month two or three. Before that, speaking practice mostly recycles the handful of words you know. Shadowing native audio is the lowest-friction way to start, since it needs no partner.
What should I skip as a beginner?
Keigo, handwriting every kanji, pitch accent drills, memorizing every reading of every character, and rare counters. All of these are real, and all of them are lower-frequency than the things they would displace in your first six months.
Free on iPhone and iPad. One Premium account also unlocks Hanzijo (Chinese) and Hanguljo (Korean).