Kanjinotes

Kanjinotes is a notepad, Japanese dictionary, and quiz program. Often when you are studying Japanese, your notes include definitions, kanjis, and readings. This app makes it easy to save this information in your notepad all in one click. The contents of your notepad can be immediately used for a multiple-choice quiz.

One of the most useful functions is the translate function, which will take a block of Japanese text and segment out the words in the text that are in the dictionary and it will create a list of notes with the kanji, reading, and definition for each word. Once you create this, you can also remove duplicate items using the special button in the editing mode within the notepad.

When making your own notes, you can search the dictionary by writing a kanji character and then finding words that include that character. You can also search for words using English words, hiragana, and kanji using the search bar. Once you find a word, clicking on its kanji will allow you to save it in your Notes or copy it to the search bar for further searches. By clicking on the add button on the button bar, it is possible to add empty notes to the notepad for your own comments. When you do this, the contents of the search bar are included in the new note, so that you can easily record words that are not in the dictionary. Notes can be reordered and deleted by pressing the edit button on the top button bar. You can export your notes to text files and share them with your friends. It is also possible to import notes into the program using the clipboard.

If two devices are connected to your apple account, the program will sync notes across devices. For example, you might initially use your ipad to create a note during class, but you can later use your iphone to quiz yourself on the words. It is also possible to create folders and drag your notes into and out of folders. Be careful as this will change files across all of your devices.

On the ipad, the split screen mode with notepad and dictionary is best. But when there is less space like on the iphone, it is better to toggle between the notepad and dictionary using the menu bar button.

When you touch the note or search bar, you will get a keyboard. It is best if you use the mini keyboard by pinching your two fingers in the keyboard area. It will fit near the kanji canvas.

The multiple-choice quiz will present alternatives that are semantically or phonologically related to the target. It will also select alternative answers from other test items to make it difficult to use familiarity to select the best answer. These answers are generated automatically from the target, so they are sometimes strange or match the target in some way. The quiz is created by selecting a set of words from the list with a size determined by the set size slider. If the accuracy on that set is not above the accuracy threshold, then that set will be presented again. If the accuracy is above the threshold, then a new set of the same size will be selected.

The notes in this app can be imported and exported into text files. So your notes are not locked within this app and you can bring in notes from other sources to use in this app.

Supporting the app will remove the advertising. Click on the information button at the top left and you will see the support button.

This app is created by a single developer in my free time. I created this program because I found it annoying to have to separately copy kanjis, reading, and definitions every time I wanted to save them in my notes. The dictionaries that are used are free open-source dictionaries that are not as good as professional versions. The kanji character recognizer uses an old character recognizer, so it might not be as accurate as newer versions. Even with its limitations, it is useful for me and I hope it is useful for others.