It’s my great pleasure to announce that you can now buy iKana Nōto on the App Store! iKana Nōto is a new take on the iKana series and rather than being a flash card based, reference type application, it instead focuses on helping you practice writing Japanese.

One of the things studying Japanese using mobile devices and computers lacks is the sort of hands on approach and muscle memory training you get from actually writing out hiragana, katakana and kanji. I’ve sort to address that with iKana Nōto and it’s really only possible thanks to the iPad’s large multi-touch screen. You certainly can’t write seriously using a mouse or trackpad and the iPhone screen is really too small for writing more than single characters, and even then complex kanji can be a challenge. I wanted to make it easier to practice writing both vertically and horizontally and so iKana Nōto has a selection of templates that allow for both styles.

Writing a postcard in iKana Nōto

The large writing area makes it easy to draw kana and kanji alike and you can pick the writing tool and stroke width that suit your style. Setting the cursor position is easy and the previous and next buttons on either side the writing area adjust depending on whether you are writing vertically or horizontally.

The rethink

One of the reasons iKana Nōto took a little longer to release than originally planned was because the direction of the app changed midway. Originally I was planning a more direct port of iKana touch, scaled up the iPad’s big screen. But it rapidly became apparent just upsizing things wasn’t really adding any value or making good use of iPad’s potential. Instead the reference side of the app has been reduced to a small part of the overall functionality.

The original iKana Nōto design

The future

I’m planning to add more templates and add a kanji reference and dictionary to the app over time. I also have plans for a Mac companion app that will allow printing and creation of nice high-resolution versions of your nōtos. Stay tuned for more details.

The iPad screen is pretty big and scaling flash cards up isn’t that exciting. Let’s try something different…

iKana Nōto – coming soon to iPad

Japan is a country near and dear to my heart and if you’ve seen the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami on the news you know the kind of massive scale it’s on. The Japanese government has made an appeal for aid and great organisations like the Red Cross are stepping up to provide support for those caught up in the disaster. Please consider making a donation.

• British Red Cross
• American Red Cross

Thank you.