How to learn kanji for the JLPT in a few minutes a day
Cramming kanji rarely sticks. Here’s a short daily routine for JLPT N5 to N3 kanji that builds recognition, readings and real usage, without hours of flashcards.
The JLPT doesn’t test whether you can recite a list. It tests whether you can recognise a kanji in a word, read it, and understand it in a sentence. That’s why a few focused minutes every day tends to beat a weekend of cramming: you meet each character more than once, in more than one context, and it has time to settle.
How many kanji you need
There’s no official list any more, but the commonly used guides put it roughly at:
- N5: around 100 kanji
- N4: around 300
- N3: around 650
- N2: around 1,000
- N1: around 2,000, close to the full jōyō set
Spread over a year, even the jump to N3 is fewer than two new kanji a day. The hard part isn’t the number. It’s remembering them.
A daily routine that sticks
1. Meet one kanji properly. Rather than skimming twenty, spend a few minutes with one. Look at its shape and the parts it’s made from, then its meanings and readings.
2. Learn it in words, not alone. Most kanji have more than one reading, and the one you need depends on the word. 日 is nichi in 日曜日, hi in 日の出 and ka in 二日. Learning a couple of everyday words for each kanji teaches you the readings you’ll actually see.
3. See it in a sentence. A real example sentence shows how the word behaves: what it attaches to, how formal it is.
4. Come back to it. Review the ones you’ve already met, especially the ones you got wrong.
Making it a habit with Kanji Detective
That routine is what Kanji Detective is built around. Each day there’s one hidden kanji from JLPT N5–N3, the same for every player. You question suspects by typing a kanji, a reading or an English meaning, and every wrong guess reveals another clue, from its stroke count and components through to an example sentence. There’s more on that in how the clues work.
Once you’ve solved it, the case file covers steps 1 to 3: meanings, readings with romaji, animated stroke order, example words and real example sentences. The kanji then goes in your casebook with your grade, so you can reopen it and revise. An optional daily reminder and streaks help with the hardest part, which is showing up.
The daily case is free. If you want more than one kanji a day, Kanji Detective Plus (a one-time purchase) adds unlimited training at the JLPT levels you choose, where the kanji that stumped you come back more often, plus a harder N2–N1 cold case each day.
The short version
One kanji a day, learned in words and sentences, reviewed when you get it wrong. It doesn’t feel like much on any given day, and that’s the point.