Osmo 4+

Take the easy, casual approach to learning Japanese characters with Osmo: the only passive learning tool that helps you recognise kana without direct, intensive study.

Osmo is a low-effort way to memorize Japanese kana characters over time. Set it running and it will show you regularly changing glyphs until you tell it to stop. Now focus on your other tasks - get your work done or whatever. There's no demand for you to do anything more with Osmo. The kana characters are always just there. You see them, whether you mean to or not. As time passes, you start to recognize them. When you're ready for the next level, turn off the romaji. If you're not sure of the current one, mouse over the zoom window and you'll see the romaji again so you can check.

Configure the app however you like:
- Focus on katakana, hiragana or both.
- Use colours to separate katakana from hiragana, or keep everything high-contrast black and white.
- Set the update frequency in seconds, minutes or hours.
- Skip over characters to the next one in the randomized sequence.
- Tell Osmo to ignore characters you already know.

Please note: Osmo does not use spaced repetition patterns - it's more laidback than that. It doesn't teach you how to write the characters with zen-like calligraphy practice. And it doesn't have a voice trainer to tell you if you're pronouncing them correctly. Those are things left for you to sort out when you're ready to dig deeper into learning to read and write Japanese.

Osmo is the result of my spending years glancing at Japanese kana characters on signs, buildings, clothing, websites and packaging, etc., without knowing what they mean. While I was busy focusing on other things, I kept promising myself that I would start trying to learn the syllabaries. It was never going to be the same as learning the language, but it was a start. It would mean being able to decipher things on menu boards (albeit slowly), understand advertisements, maybe even read little parts of interesting Japanese websites that are otherwise unavailable to me without a translation service.

If you have any feedback, issues or otherwise need support, email me at helpme@thirteencrows.io