Shinobi: Read & Learn Japanese

I’ve found Shinobi to be one of the most helpful tools in my acquisition of Japanese. It’s pretty challenging in the more advanced levels, but it’s worth the effort. I spend a lot of time shadowing each page so it would be nice if there was a repeat button for looping the automated voice that reads each page, without having to press the play button each time I want to hear it again. One slight quibble: I found that I raced through the beginner levels pretty quickly because there weren’t enough stories to keep me occupied until I had improved enough for the advanced levels. I probably would have repeated a lot of the stories I had already read, but because I didn’t want to break my daily streak, I had to keep going - and pretty quickly I was on the upper levels which take a lot longer to read through. So more stories in the beginner levels would have better. Fortunately, new stories are being added all the time. Overall. Highly Recommended.

I had been learning Japanese on my own for several years. This app has been very helpful in allowing me to actually read along and try to decipher the conversation as it goes. I listen once, and try to pick out what I recognize, then I read along and see what else I can figure out. The ability to click on words that I haven’t learned yet, allows me to figure out the rest, based on context. I really enjoy this app, and the test at the end gives me confidence that I have actually understood what I read. Great, simple stories at the beginning? And they appear to get more difficult as you progress, which is great. I also like that you can slow it down, to try to catch more of the listening, before needing to move on to the reading and vocab discovery. This is a great tool for any level. Reading and listening are super important, and the furigana above the Kanji allows you to familiarize yourself with those characters as well great app!

I don’t write reviews. This may be my first ever. This app is perfect for me so far. It’s bite sized and great for personalized, controlled, and engaging learning. You can work on reading and listening at your own learning pace! There’s also kanji and vocab learning tools. It pretty much works on everything except writing and speaking. But input (as opposed to output) is most important for learning, especially early on. I know n5 grammar and vocab, and can read and write hiragana/katakana, so it’s a perfect next step for me. Best part of all is that all of the learning is actually in context (in this case, situated in stories with visuals) and teaches culture at the same time. Learning is often out of context (flash cards, textbooks, route memory work, classroom, etc). Culture and context are two of the most important ingredients for learning language correctly and it actually sticking in your memory. In summary, this app is great for input (listening/reading) and learning in context!!