Three ideas, and nothing else to configure.
Everything in Fudemoji falls out of three convictions about how writing is really learned. There are no other levers to pull.
Produce the character. Don’t just recognise it.
Most apps show you 水 beside three decoys and ask which one it is. That trains recognition, the easy half of knowing. Fudemoji hands you a blank page and asks you to make the character, stroke by stroke, from memory.
Recognising a face in a crowd is effortless. Drawing it from memory is knowing it. Production is the harder skill and the one that lasts, so it’s the only kind of answer Fudemoji ever asks for.
“Which of these is water?” → you tap one of four. A guess counts.
“Write the kanji for water.” → you draw 水. Nothing to guess from.
You grade yourself. The app never marks you wrong.
There is no spelling check, no stroke-order police, no red cross for a wobbly line. You write, you reveal the answer, and you rate how well you actually recalled it: Again, Hard, Good, or Easy.
This isn’t the app going easy on you: honest self-assessment is the entire engine that schedules your reviews. And it quietly removes the thing that stops most beginners before they start: the fear of getting it wrong. Here, a shaky first attempt is exactly the point.
The spacing does the scheduling. You just show up.
You never decide what to review. A proven spaced-repetition algorithm (FSRS) watches your grades and brings each card back at the moment you’re about to forget it, not sooner, which wastes your time, and not later, which means relearning from scratch.
There are no intervals to tune and no settings to understand. Grade honestly and close the app. The method keeps working underneath.
You need to know nothing to start. Really.
Two worries keep people from opening a kanji app at all. Here’s why neither applies.
I don’t know any Japanese yet.
You don’t need to. Every card can teach you the shape from zero: tap Show me and the character draws itself in the correct stroke order, then leaves a faint guide for you to trace over. You learn the form by makingit, from the very first minute, before you can read a thing. Fudemoji even seeds a tiny starter deck on first run, so there’s something to write the moment you open it.
I don’t understand spaced repetition.
You don’t have to. There are no intervals to choose, no algorithm to configure, no dashboard to read. Your whole job is three moves: write, reveal, grade honestly, and the scheduling happens on its own. The clever part is deliberately invisible so you can spend your attention on the writing, which is the part that matters.
The whole loop, start to finish.
Six moves. After the first card it becomes one motion, and it takes about five minutes a day.
Open the app.
You land straight on a small starter deck: no account, no sign-up, nothing to set up. Everything stays on your device; nothing is uploaded.
Got your own Anki deck? Tap Import a deck (.apkg) on the home screen and pick the file. Your decks, your device.
Tap Study
The write screen shows a prompt, “write the kanji for water,” above a blank paper canvas. Pick the ink that feels good in your hand: pencil, fountain pen, or calligraphy brush.
Write it by hand.
With your Apple Pencil, a stylus, or just your finger, draw the character as best you can remember. Don’t worry about getting it right; trying to produce it is what does the work, even when the attempt is rough.
Stuck? Tap Show me
Watch the character drawn stroke by stroke in the correct order, then trace over the faded guide it leaves behind. It’s the fastest way to learn a new shape, and using it is remembered honestly, so it can nudge your grade.
Tap Reveal
See the character, its reading, and its meaning laid out clearly, and hear it, if the card carries audio. Now compare it honestly against what you wrote.
Grade yourself, and go again.
Pick the honest button. That one tap tells the scheduler when this card should return, and drops you into the next one.
Blanked, or way off. See it again very soon.
Got there, but it was a struggle.
Recalled it with a little effort. The honest default.
Instant and effortless. Push it further out.
…and that’s the whole thing. Do it for five minutes. Fudemoji decides the rest.
Quiet things that grow with you.
A daily queue 今日
New cards and due reviews, mixed into one short session and capped so it never becomes a slog.
Streak & progress 記録
A streak, an activity heatmap, and how far you’ve come toward each JLPT level, all built from your own honest grades.
Reverse cards 逆
See the character, write its reading and meaning; the recall runs both directions, scheduled independently.
Your decks, portable 出
Filter by tag, fix a card in place, or export any deck back to a standard .apkg that reopens in Anki.
Write it once by hand, and it’s yours.
書いて、覚える · write it, know it