KANAGRID

KANAGRID is a simple tool to memorize the two syllabaries of the Japanese language (hiragana and katakana).

Press ENTER to show the menu to change the current level (1-11), switch to hiragana or to katakana mode, or show the controls. Press the 🅾(Y/Z)-key if you already know the currently highlighted character, or ❎(X) if you don't know the character and would like to see how to pronounce the kana. If you use a controller, these two keys should be mapped to controller buttons 1 and 2, depending on the controller used.

The levels 1-10 correspond to the ten columns in which the kana are usually presented (A-KA-SA-TA-NA-HA-MA-YA-RA-WA). Level 11 lets you train all the 46 basic hiragana or katakana. The current level is automatically increased after validating several time that a kana is already known. Since not all katakana dakuten and combination characters are available in PICO-8, KANAGRID is limited to the basic characters only.

The built-in font of the PICO-8 platform is small so some characters may be difficult to recognize at first glance. It is advisable in the beginning to have a hiragana and a katakana chart at hand. I like the charts that can be found here and here.