Visiting japan for a couple of weeks, which means unless I am willing to cough up exorbitant cash to AT&T/Softbank I will be offline a lot, unable to access Anki or Kanjikoohi. 

I decided to use the time offline by working on kana.  I read hiragana fairly well, but hadn't yet  a concerted effort to learn katakana.  My writing in both cases is weak.  I decided to spend the $8 for the "ikana" app. 

It's a neat little app.  With two stand-out features: finger-drawn stroke order practice and a "speed test" for kana recognition. 

For the writing practice, you get a nice big version of the individual kana which you trace with your finger.  When you draw a stroke correctly, the program confirms it, and lets you move onto the next stroke.  The writing practice does not help you to draw the kana on a blank screen, so there is always a figure to trace.  Ideally there would also be a version of writing practice without that crutch.

The speed test is great for increasing speed of recognition.  A little timer bar under the character lends a sense of urgency, perking up those neurons.  It's very rewarding to see yourself recognizing in a quick second instead of five. 

You can customize your own practice lists, adding individual kana that you want to focus on, and then choose writing practice or speed test.  As well, the program keeps a frequently failed list.

Bottom line:  Worth the $8 if you need to practice your kana.

yukkuri_kame wrote:

I decided to spend the $8 for the "iKana" app.  It's a neat little app.  With two stand-out features: finger-drawn stroke order practice and a "speed test" for kana recognition.

My SO bought this as we're both a little weak on katakana. Overpriced compared to some of the other Japanese learning apps, but nice nonetheless, I agree. However, check the stroke order for katakana "n"... I believe it's incorrect, as the longer stroke should go "north."

Has anybody else noticed the Japanese Iphone games made by Macer?  They are designed for Japanese natives and are completely in Japanese.  One seems to be a quiz game about Japanese counters and I think the other one has you write out Japanese readings to Chinese characters using the kana keyboard.  Another one is apparently about history.  I haven't tried them out yet, but one has a free demo version and another is freeware so it might to be worth a looksy for those of us that can understand it.  Try typing "macer" in the app search to find them.

The website is http://macer.jp

Edit:  oops, I see that dilandau has already pointed out the kanji power one on the first page of this thread.

Last edited by Dragg (2008 September 23, 11:06 pm)

It uses EDICT just like all the other iPhone dictionaries out there. Someone took a free dictionary and wrapped it around a pretty interface. Given the content is exactly the same, it seems like a waste of money.

Charging 2300円 for a barebones EDICT parser that could have been slapped together in a day or 2 is almost criminal. Especially when you consider that there are REAL J-E dictionaries complete with sample sentences on the Appstore like Longman & WISDOM for only 100-500円 more.

I got a 2nd gen Ipod Touch.  No jailbreak available for that one yet, so I've just been using the online interface for Anki, but I'd love to have one that worked when I wasn't connected to wifi.

There seems to be a problem with the Study (standard) AJAX version not displaying completely (bottom of the view gets chopped off if its too long), which is a pity because it updates faster than the Simple view.

There is now an internet radio app for Iphone that specifically features Japanese language audio.  There are mainly music stations now, but I also found a Skype conversation in Japanese!  The app is called LADIOTOUCH and it is available for free download at the iPhone app store.

A little plug for my plugin.

http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/iAnki

It's now compatible with other browsers, and should work on Windows Mobile too.

No, you don't need to jailbreak.

It looks good but could do with two (obvious) improvements (that you've likely already thought about): more than 400 cards synced per deck (I only run two decks atm, but many expired cards per day due to their size), and being able to continue studying after closing Safari and re-opening on iPhone. The second is due to Safari I'm sure, but there can perhaps be other ways of doing it (such as saving the page and opening through Airsharing).

I'll try it out on Wednesday after the long weekend is over and I have to leave my house.

-edit-
Odd, it doesn't appear to work. "ianki" appears (checked) in the startup part of the Plugins menu after installation, but there is nothing called "ianki server" anywhere.
Anki 0.9.8.3

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2008 October 13, 4:37 pm)

Its not that I couldn't get it started - there is nowhere TO start it! Maybe its only an issue on OSX...

resolve wrote:

Checked tools and plugins menu?
If it's not there, it's broken. Check the system console for a log.

08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432] Traceback (most recent call last):
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432]   File "ankiqt/ui/main.pyc", line 1333, in loadPlugins
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432]   File "/Users/####/.anki/plugins/ianki.py", line 5, in ?
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432]   File "/Users/####/.anki/plugins/ianki_ext/__init__.py", line 20, in ?
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432]   File "/Users/####/.anki/plugins/ianki_ext/web/SimpleHTTPServer.py", line 15, in ?
08/10/13 17:11:50 [0x0-0x3b63b6].cx.repose.anki[7432] ImportError: No module named BaseHTTPServer

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2008 October 13, 6:14 pm)

Jarvik7 wrote:

It looks good but could do with two (obvious) improvements (that you've likely already thought about): more than 400 cards synced per deck (I only run two decks atm, but many expired cards per day due to their size)

I intend to make the card synching more configurable, so you can choose how many cards to sync; how many new ones versus old ones and that sort of thing.

The 400 limit is a safe limit, but could be higher.

There's a bug on the iPhone Safari's database implementation where it will crash & corrupt the database if it grows to 5MB, so that has to be avoided.  Interestingly, if you run iAnki on multiple ports like 8000, 8001, 8002... each one will get its own database of 5MB, so this may be a way to get around the limitaition.

and being able to continue studying after closing Safari and re-opening on iPhone. The second is due to Safari I'm sure, but there can perhaps be other ways of doing it (such as saving the page and opening through Airsharing).

This problem is already solved on version 0.13b by using a HTML5 cache manifest.

You can now bookmark iAnki on your Home Screen (and get a nice icon too!), and run it any time.