Satori Reader

This app is great for practicing and learning Japanese, with so many useful features. The core is mini stories broken up into short chapters that you can read and listen to (you can even choose the speed of the reading). You can also choose your level of kanji, and furigana will be provided for characters you don’t know yet. Within the story, grammar and occasionally cultural points can be viewed as pop ups - the explanations are clear and often enlightening. Maybe best of all, at the bottom of each chapter, you can ask questions and see questions that other people have asked. Like the grammar explanations, the answers are usually very helpful - I’ve gotten answers to great questions that I hadn’t even thought to ask. Don’t know a word in the story? Add it to your review flash cards. You can then review them in context (the sentence where you learned the word). The timing on how often the cards repeat depends on whether you say missed the answer or it was hard/medium/easy to remember. It’s a pretty effective way to learn new words. You can also choose to review the words you said were hard to remember, or that you’ve already learned. There are so many great features, I’m sure I’ve missed some, but you get the idea. The developers have clearly put a lot of time, thought, and effort into this app, and it shows!

I’ve been using this app nearly every day for a little over 6 months and some of the words and phrases I’ve come across in the stories on Satori have popped up in my Japanese conversations! Also, it works really well in conjunction with WaniKani. I really enjoy the episodes with voice and sound effects. The voice actors have done amazing work. The fact that every single word and phrase has been annotated with detailed explanations is my favorite aspect of this app. I read other things in Japanese too, but they don’t have the benefit of these annotations. I also appreciate that each episode has its own discussion area. I often read through those to get further insight on some of the more difficult areas of an episode. I can only recommend this app to anyone learning Japanese. Even if the stories are difficult at first, often, they get easier a few episodes in as you learn the associated vocabulary. If not, there are many others to choose from. I’ve noticed that if you start with the easier ones that some of the same words and phrases will pop up again in other stories that are labeled as intermediate or harder.

I’m N2 level, and have returned to live in the US. I love this app because there are interesting stories at native level, spoken at a normal rate of speed, and you can choose to have kana, furigana, or just written as normal. Not only can you look up every word in the stories, but some of the word definitions and grammar points go rather in-depth. And then on top of all this you can generate a vocabulary study list that uses a type of space repetition (that doesn’t overdo it if you miss a few days, swamping you with reviews). Furthermore, I don’t always have a lot of time, but the story chapters are short and so you can really just sit back and spend about 10 minutes or so for a quick lesson if that’s all the time you have. If you want more, you can plow ahead, no problem. Very versatile. And given all of the beginner to intermediate level grammar lessons that they also include for those who wish, I can imagine this versatile app being very useful for a very wide range of learners, from beginners all the way to certain somewhat advanced levels. As long as they keep expanding their content to include a greater variety of subjects including higher levels, I don’t quite see why I would ever stop using this app.