Once you feel you’ve mastered the introductory hiragana exercises, it’s time to work on reading faster. This is a simple trainer for learners of Japanese to improve their recognition speed of hiragana. Keep in mind: this exercise assumes that you have already learned the pronunciation of each letter.

The Hiragana Trainer gives you practice with 46 basic shapes, and 54 voiced sounds and glides. You can use this program to improve your recognition speed of hiragana.

Interesting note: We tested with native speakers to see how fast they can perform this task. It appears to be 0.4 second interval is the fastest they can keep up with. We suggest you set your goal to be 0.4 or 0.5 second. (This is the speed when the task requires you to vocalize the sound. When you read silently, the recognition speed is faster.)

Take a look at the example below, and then begin the exercise. Again, you can try this as many times as you want. We recommend practicing a lot!