ABOUT MINIMACHI
Japanese,
one small step at a time.
MiniMachi’s free hiragana resources help beginners look up characters and practice reading and writing them.
What you can use here
The hiragana chart connects to individual character guides, short lessons, quizzes, writing practice, reading activities, flashcards and printable worksheets. The writing-system references and typing tools support that study.
These resources work without an account. Reference content is readable without JavaScript; interactive activities use JavaScript and save progress in your browser.
Teaching content and review
Japanese teaching content remains a draft pending educator review. The exercises are practice activities; their results are not a language qualification or a guarantee of learning outcomes.
The hiragana resources contain 322 core clips generated with Google Cloud Text-to-Speech and approved by a native Japanese speaker. Players identify them as generated speech. Supplemental words and texts do not all have audio; each page states the audio it provides.
Sources and credits
Stroke models are adapted from KanjiVG by Ulrich Apel and contributors, under CC BY-SA 3.0. Stroke-model license and attribution. Models are writing references; print and handwriting can differ.
Typing and conversion tools use WanaKana and, for estimated kanji readings, kuromoji.js with IPADIC. Their license notices are linked on the tools. Estimated readings need checking in context.