How This Hiragana Test Works
This free test covers all 104 hiragana a beginner needs: the 46 basic characters, the 25 dakuten and handakuten variants (が, ぱ and friends), and the 33 combination sounds (きゃ, しゅ, ちょ). You can quiz in both directions — seeing a character and choosing its romaji reading, or seeing romaji and picking the correct hiragana, which is the direction most learners find harder and practise least. The wrong answers you see aren't random: each question's distractors are drawn from the characters most commonly confused with the right answer (think ぬ and め, or ね, れ and わ), so a correct answer here means you can genuinely tell the tricky pairs apart, not just eliminate obviously wrong options.
Four Modes for Different Stages
Practice mode gives instant feedback with a short explanation whenever you slip, which is ideal in your first weeks — mistakes get corrected before they become habits. Exam mode hides all feedback until the end, simulating test pressure. The Speed Challenge — 20 questions in 60 seconds — trains the automatic, no-thinking recognition you need for real reading, because a character you decode in three seconds is a character you can't read yet. And the Daily Challenge serves ten questions that are the same for every visitor that day, so you and a friend can compare scores fairly.
The Mistake Analysis Is the Real Feature
At the end of every test, you don't just get a score — you get a list of exactly which characters you missed and, more importantly, which pairs you confuse (ぬ ↔ め is the classic). That pair list is your highest-value study target: five minutes of deliberately comparing two confusable characters fixes more reading errors than an hour of general review. Bookmark the ones that keep biting you and run a bookmarks-only session, or hit "Retry wrong answers" to drill your misses immediately while they're fresh. Your lifetime progress and badges are stored in your browser — no account needed.
Where This Fits in Your Study
If you're brand new, learn the characters first with the complete hiragana guide — a two-week plan is realistic (here's mine) — and use this test to confirm each row as you learn it. Aim for three short sessions: pass a practice round of a new row, pass a mixed exam of everything so far, and finish the week with a Speed Challenge. Once you clear 90% at speed, you're ready to move on to katakana and real N5 grammar. Recognition that's fast is recognition that's finished.