250 Banjin no Kanken Premium - Zenkyuu Zen-Kanji Kanzen Seiha

Definitely not for beginners and people who hasn't master at least their Kana ...
even if you are at a level where you have just finished your Kana and has not mastered enough vocabulary it will be a long journey ahead -_-::: you Definitely need jap-eng dictionary it's a major crash course in Kanji and major brain overload !!!!

I use this one for proper Kanji strokes order. pre-made flash cards had been known to have some stroke order errors as well as Japanese coach -_-::

After getting around to the menu it has definitely help me with my kanji ALOT.

Program is completely in Japanese which made figuring out the interface initially challenging, but once I learned my way around it became a great practice tool. Haven't had it long enough to really say what it's impact has been, but I have learned that kanji "stick" better in my mind if I know the English meaning, so I recommend looking up the Kanji as you get to them.

First of all, it needs to be stated that 250 Mannin no Kanken is designed for Japanese native speakers, and includes lots of functions beyond what you might expect. On top of showing and quizzing you on how to read and write kanji, it also has quizzes on stroke count, radical, and more. This is designed for the Kanji Kentei, a very comprehensive test of Kanji knowledge which poses a challenge even to native speakers, and thusly includes over 6000 kanji to study, broken into 10 levels, and two 'pre-levels', see the Wikipedia page on Kanji Kentei for more information on this. This gives the product an incredible life-- there are literally three times more kanji to study here than you would be expected to learn to become fluent.

It is NOT designed for the absolute beginner; it's not a higher quality version of "My Japanese Couch", and there's no English to help you around the menus. You will need at a minimum a knowledge of hiragana and katakana in order to use the reading and writing tests. Because there is no English assistance, most of the words you're writing in will be meaningless to you unless you have a fair vocabulary to link the readings to. The only other alternative is to look these words up, a fairly laborious process if you intend to do it for every word.

The software holds two users, so you can allow a friend to try it without messing up your personal data, or it could be shared with someone else. Once you select your user, you're brought to the menu screen, which consists of four options. The bottom is a "Kanji Check", which tests your all-around knowledge on the level you currently have selected. The middle is the meat of the application, and consists of reading and writing tests on the first page, and other tests (stroke order, radical, association, etc.) on the second and third pages. On the right is a button that leads to a log of your activity; how many Kanji you've studied, how long you've spent on the software, and so on. The top leads you to a page with four options-- From top down, a page full of all the kanji on that level, which will teach you to write them, and also contains tons of useful information (on and kun readings, stroke order, archaic versions and so on; if not for the lack of an ability to look up kanji, this would even make a decent kanji dictionary) on each. Below that is writing and reading tests. In these, you are presented either katakana or a kanji with a red bar next to it; when you have the katakana reading, you have to write the kanji that matches it (the software handwriting recognition is very good, and can be tweaked to be more forgiving in the options. The options also contain an option to either automatically put in the kanji when movement stops, or to wait for you to press an "input" button before trying to read it), and when you have the kanji, you have to write the reading in hiragana. This is the main draw of the application for me; it greatly increases your ability to read and write Japanese. These are mostly the same as the reading and writing tests in the quiz section, except they only contain 5 at a time, instead of 10, and the quiz section includes a "Hint" button which allows you to see the answer and draw it in, which makes it good for practicing things you don't know yet. The fourth option is a test, 20 kanji at a time, to review your knowledge of them.

I've gotten in the habit of carrying my DS around and popping this out whenever I'm stuck in line, waiting on a bus or train, or whatever other downtime I have. I've managed to use it over an hour a day for weeks, and am definitely happy with the improvement I've seen in my abilities so far. This would make a great gift for anyone who has studied Japanese for more than a few months, and will likely last them for years and years.