BENDAMA · ben-da-ma — a jewel earned through effort.
Ben is effort. Dama is a jewel. When you truly learn something here, it becomes a bendama — small, permanent, yours. No streaks to break, no points that reset. What you earn, you keep.
That's it — you've just read your first Japanese word.
勉玉 · ben·da·ma · “a jewel earned through effort”
Read it, write it by hand, say it — with real Japanese you can trust, pitched just past what you already know. Start exactly where you are.
New to Japanese? Skip the test — begin from the sounds. Studied before? A two‑minute check finds your level.
Every word traces to a real dictionary. Nothing here is invented.
What reading feels like here
A two-minute check finds your level — or you skip it and begin at the very first sound. From there every line is mostly things you have already met, plus one you haven’t. You don’t memorise lists. You understand a little more than you did yesterday, and each piece is a bendama you keep.
The engine
Every word, kanji and sentence here is placed before you ever see it — by how hard it is, and by what you can do with it. Japan grades difficulty from N5 (beginner) up to N1, and Bendama uses the same scale, so what you gain here counts outside the app too.
So the next thing you meet is always the one just past you: hard enough to grow, close enough to land — the reach that earns your next bendama. And you can see the map, not just take our word for it.
Nothing you see is random — every line is chosen for where you areWhat you can do →
One learner’s grid, part-way through. Yours fills in as you go.
What it’s built on
A system built to make Japanese honest, usable, and yours — from your first sound to your own sentences.
Every word, reading, and example sentence is traced to an open, licensed source — never invented, never a plausible‑but‑wrong guess. (Talking with Akira is the one living, unscripted part, and it says so.)
Trace hiragana, katakana, and kanji by hand in the correct stroke order. Compose your own sentences and have them checked. Recognising a word is the start line here, not the finish.
The reading support fades as you learn. You move up a level by showing you can actually use the Japanese — not by reaching the end of a list. Progress you can point to, because you proved it.
What you actually do
Ten ways to practise — each its own screen in the app — carrying you from first meeting a word to writing your own diary entry, and making it stick.
Plus particles and grammar explained in plain English — from the very first level upward.
Say it out loud
Reading Japanese is only half of it. With Echo, a native voice speaks a line and draws its pitch — where the voice lifts and falls. You record your own, and your pitch appears right over the model’s.
Match the shape and you stop sounding like a textbook. Every take stays on your phone — nothing uploaded — and it’s kept, so you can hear how far you’ve come.
こだま Echo · record · compare · yours aloneThat’s the name: 勉玉 — ‘bendama’, a jewel earned through effort. Sign in with your email, one code, no password. Free to start, and you can begin from the very first sound. Every effort, a small kept thing.