Using Manabi Kōbō on mobile and foldables

Guided Japanese Course

Use it for: Your main structured path from beginner foundations through practical professional Japanese. Work through the tracks in order, complete each lesson step, and use the linked Manabi tools when a lesson calls for extra recall, reading, kana, kanji, handwriting, or sentence-building practice.

Your lesson and workbook progress is kept in this browser. The cumulative workbook gives you a paper-friendly and on-screen place to produce Japanese instead of only recognizing it.

How to Use the Site

Use these guides as the map. They explain the four pillars, supporting practice tools, professional resources, and device-specific behavior.

Japanese Adaptive Recall

Use it for: Turning useful everyday, internal-monologue, and professional phrases into durable recall with adaptive timing.

Try to produce the Japanese before revealing it, use hints only when needed, and rate the attempt honestly.

Importing Anki and phrase banks

Kotoba Fishing and Adaptive Recall share one browser-local imported phrase bank. Choose Import Anki / phrase file, review Manabi’s field suggestions, map the Japanese field and any optional reading, rōmaji, meaning, or category fields, preview the notes, then import.

Rollback: Open Manage imported decks to remove one source or all imported content. The built-in Manabi phrases are never removed. Adaptive Recall history for deleted imported phrases is preserved unless you explicitly select the option to delete that history too.

Tsundoku Reading Nook

Use it for: Curated bilingual reading with controlled chunks, furigana, translation modes, grammar relationships, or an imported Anki deck shown as synchronized front/back cards.

Start sentence-by-sentence, then increase the reading size as your confidence grows. Use Import Anki deck as book to turn each deck into one bookshelf entry, and Delete selected Anki book when you no longer want it on this device.

Side by Side Reader

Use it for: Moving beyond curated readings: provide a supported public HTTPS page in English or Spanish and compare its safe reader view with Japanese in Kanji, Furigana, Kana, or Rōmaji.

Desktop and unfolded foldables are the recommended experience. On narrow 19.5:9 or 20:9-style phone layouts, the Japanese pane stacks below the source. Sync scrolling is optional; cached pages may load much faster after the first translation.

Language IDE

Use it for: Building, compiling, and debugging Japanese with typed grammar blocks and software-engineering-style diagnostics.

Reconstruct sentences from your lessons, compile them, inspect structural diagnostics, and iterate.

Kana Dojo

Build fast hiragana and katakana recognition through focused drills. A good warm-up before recall or reading.

Jōyō Kanji Hub

Explore the 2,136 daily-use kanji through meaning, readings, components, pronunciation, and stroke order.

Kotoba Fishing · ことば釣り

Use it for: Fast recognition of words inside complete internal-monologue phrases. Read the phrase, follow the highlighted target, then catch the matching answer with the arrow keys or touch controls.

Switch Japanese ↔ rōmaji modes at any time. A miss sends that phrase to the end of the queue for another attempt; View Report summarizes practiced phrases, misses, repeated failures, timing, and difficult items. When installation is offered from the Fishing page, it installs as an independent Kotoba Fishing PWA.

Furigana Lens

Use a photo or camera capture of Japanese text to place kana readings directly above detected kanji. The tool is intentionally focused on reading support: it does not translate, rewrite, or summarize the page.

How to use it: Choose Upload image or Camera, scan the page, then use the controls above the image to zoom, resize the furigana, change its text color, or add an optional background behind the readings. Show furigana can hide the overlay at any time.

Privacy: The selected image remains in the browser for display. The server processes an in-memory copy for OCR and returns only the detected text coordinates and readings; the image and converted output are not saved.

Kanji Radicals

Recognize reusable components so complex kanji become easier to inspect and remember.

Sentence Builder

Practice Japanese word order, particles, and sentence patterns before applying them in recall or the Language IDE.

Reference Hub

Use books, courses, communities, project information, and recommended resources as starting points for deeper study.

90 Day Syllabus

Use the structured 90-day path to organize consistent study and protect momentum between larger lessons.

Michel Thomas Method Companion

After completing the audio material, use this independent companion for reading, writing, recall, and longer-term reinforcement.

Video Games with Furigana

Browse games by platform to find additional Japanese reading exposure with furigana or learner-friendly text where available.