KanaSensei: Read Japanese kana in two weeks

👋 Hey Product Hunt, I'm Samuel — the person behind KanaSensei. Last year I went to Japan. I had the trip planned to the detail, but the moment I landed I realized I couldn't read a single thing — menus, train signs, konbini shelves, all just squiggles. I promised myself I'd actually learn to read kana before going back. So I did what I usually do: I tried the existing apps. And they were either bloated, gamified into oblivion, or made a genuinely simple thing feel like a chore. Learning hiragana and katakana isn't a hard problem — it's ~200 characters — but everything I tried buried that under clutter. So I built the tool I wished I'd had. Just for me, at first. Type the reading, build a streak, and lean on picture-story mnemonics that turn each character into something you literally can't forget. No noise, no 40-screen onboarding — you open it and you're learning. I obsessed over making the UX clean and the whole thing genuinely pleasant to use, because that's the part everyone else skips. I had a stupid amount of fun building it. And once it actually got me reading kana in a couple of weeks, it seemed silly to keep it to myself — so here it is. If you've ever wanted to read Japanese and bounced off the usual apps, I made this for you too. Would love your honest feedback — I'm right here in the comments all day. 🙏