JLPT Kanji Companion

The JLPT exam tests kanji knowledge progressively across five levels. N5 requires approximately 80 kanji covering basics like numbers (一, 二, 三), days (月, 火, 水), and common nouns (人, 山, 川). N4 adds around 170 more, totaling roughly 250 kanji that cover school, work, and daily life vocabulary.

N3 expects about 650 kanji, N2 around 1,000, and N1 tests nearly all 2,136 jouyou kanji (常用漢字) designated for everyday use. For Nepali students targeting JFT Basic, the N5-N4 kanji set provides the strongest foundation.

Browse kanji organized by JLPT level, from N5 through N1. Each kanji entry shows the character, its on'yomi (Chinese reading) and kun'yomi (Japanese reading), English meaning, stroke count, and stroke order animation. You can see example vocabulary words that use the kanji in real contexts.

Use the level filter to focus on exactly the kanji you need for your current study stage. N5 students can start with the simplest characters and gradually work upward as their reading ability improves.

Rather than memorizing kanji in isolation, learn them through vocabulary words. The kanji 食 means "eat" — learn it alongside 食べる (taberu, to eat), 食事 (shokuji, meal), and 食堂 (shokudou, cafeteria). This builds connections that make recall much faster than rote memorization of individual characters.

Write each new kanji by hand at least five times, paying attention to stroke order. Physical writing activates different memory pathways than typing or reading alone. Review previously learned kanji daily using spaced repetition — even five minutes of review prevents forgetting.

Most kanji are built from smaller components called radicals (部首). Learning to recognize common radicals like 氵(water), 木 (tree), 口 (mouth), and 日 (sun) helps you break complex kanji into manageable pieces. For example, 休 (rest) combines 人 (person) and 木 (tree) — a person resting against a tree.

Creating visual stories or mnemonics for each kanji dramatically improves retention. Many Nepali students find that associating kanji with familiar images or situations makes them stick in long-term memory far better than repetitive copying alone.