Xmas Deal

From now until Xmas you can buy contribution points to have a Samurai access and get the double! For example if you buy 230 points for 10 EUR, you actually receive 460 points, that is a 4-month Samurai account activation instead of 2 months, or in other words only 2.50EUR a month (or even less if you take more points).

JA Kana

Interactive tools on the site are changing, and much will still change in 2012. JA Kana is a new tool to learn Kana, and in the long term it will replace the Flash tool already online.

JA Kana is a smart tool based on language learning scientific research. Each day JA Kana selects a few new Kana to learn (you can choose how many new Kana depending on how much time you have to learn Japanese).

JA Kana is able to detect and remember your strengths and weaknesses from your answers and answering speed. The goal is to optimize your learning time by spending more time on what you don't know well, instead of repeating ten times elements that you already master.

After a few days, it's normal that you have partially forgotten what you learned. JA Kana knows it, and offers a cyclic learning approach by making you repeat Kana that you are about to forget, not earlier, not later. If you make a mistake, or if you spend much time to answer, the problematic Kana will appear again soon in your repeating sessions.
Several Quiz options are available:

• FROM Hiragana/Katakana TO Romaji
• FROM Romaji TO Hiragana/Katakana
• FROM Hiragana TO Katakana
• FROM Katakana TO Hiragana
• FROM Audio TO Katakana
• FROM Audio TO Hiragana

It's also possible to manage your personal Kana list  to group the hardest ones for example.

JA Kana is the first "new generation" tool, others will be released in 2012. These tools will also be improved continuously with stats integration and even a writing module for Kana/Kanji thanks to new Web technologies.

Note 1: you are highly advised to use Chrome or Firefox because Internet Explorer doesn't manage some new technologies weel enough yet.

Note 2: JA Kana is for Samurai members only. Its conception required much research time, and its personal tracking system needs to much resources for me to leave an open access for all members. If you are serious about learning Japanese, get a Samurai account, you can get contribution points X2 for the same price, and you'll help for the creation of the other tools.