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Kanji tutors, lessons & classes
一 The one-stroke kanji every learner writes first.
Personally vetted Japanese tutors who teach kanji at a sustainable pace: radicals, readings, stroke order, and the joyo set that adult literacy actually requires.
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Kanji tutors for private lessons & classes
Strommen has been teaching languages since 2006, and we have always preferred to vet teachers ourselves rather than run an open marketplace. Kanji is the long arc of Japanese, and the tutor who walks you through the first thousand characters shapes the habits you will rely on for the second thousand.
Filter by location, age, or price, then book a 30-minute free trial to find the tutor whose pace and method suit yours.
Below are the Strommen tutors who teach kanji from the first 80 grade-school characters through the full joyo set. Photos, ratings, and rates are real. Click any card to read a bio and book a free 30-minute trial.
漢字 kanji — characters & readings
5 kanji fundamentals that turn 2,136 characters into a road, not a wall
These are the structural insights that make adult kanji study feel sustainable instead of impossible. A tutor introduces all five in the first month. Save the list and book a tutor for the rest.
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01
Radicals (部首)
The 214 recurring components that build almost every kanji. Memorizing the most common 50 turns new characters from a wall of strokes into a small set of familiar parts. The water radical 氵 appears in 海, 河, 泳, 湖. The hand radical 扌 appears in 持, 押, 打. Radical-first learning is the single biggest pace multiplier for adult students.
e.g. 氵 water plus 毎 every gives 海 umi (sea).
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02
On'yomi and kun'yomi
Most kanji have at least two readings. On'yomi is the Sino-Japanese reading inherited from Chinese, used in compounds of two or more kanji. Kun'yomi is the native Japanese reading, used when the character stands alone or carries verb and adjective endings. 水 reads sui in 水曜日 (Wednesday, on'yomi compound) and mizu alone meaning water (kun'yomi). You learn the reading that matters for each word you meet.
e.g. 人 reads jin or nin in compounds, hito when alone.
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03
The first 80 kanji (grade-1 kyoiku set)
The 80 characters Japanese first-graders learn: 一二三四五六七八九十 (numbers), 日月火水木金土 (days of the week), 山川田 (mountain, river, rice field), 大小中 (big, small, middle), 上下左右 (up, down, left, right), 人口目耳手足 (person, mouth, eye, ear, hand, foot), 男女子 (man, woman, child), and the rest. Achievable in roughly a month of daily practice. Covers a striking amount of basic signage.
e.g. 山田中 Yamada Naka (a mountain-rice field-middle name) reads with grade-1 characters.
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04
Stroke order rules
Top to bottom, left to right. Horizontal before vertical when they cross. Outside before inside. The bottom horizontal last when it closes a frame. These rules are taught from grade 1 in Japanese schools and are what makes your handwriting legible at speed and your written kanji resemble the printed ones. A tutor watching your pen catches the wrong order before it hardens.
e.g. 国 (country): outside frame first, then 玉 inside, then bottom horizontal closes.
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05
The joyo kanji (常用漢字)
The 2,136 characters the Japanese government designates as necessary for adult literacy in standard print. Of these, 1,026 are the kyoiku kanji learned in elementary school. The full joyo set is what newspapers, novels, government documents, and most adult signage assume. Adult learner thresholds: ~100 for survival, ~500 for comfortable everyday reading, ~1,000 for most newspapers, ~2,136 for confident adult literacy.
e.g. JLPT N5 ≈ 100 kanji. N4 ≈ 300. N3 ≈ 650. N2 ≈ 1,000. N1 ≈ 2,136.
About Kanji
The third script, built one radical at a time
Kanji are the Chinese-derived logographic characters that share the page with hiragana and katakana in written Japanese, and they are the part of the language adults most often worry about before they even start. Worth saying plainly at the top: the Japanese government's joyo kanji list, the 常用漢字 set of characters considered necessary for adult literacy in standard print, contains 2,136 characters. Japanese children learn 1,026 of them, called the kyoiku kanji, over the nine years of compulsory schooling from grade 1 through grade 9, an average of about 114 per year. The remaining roughly 1,100 are picked up in high school and adult reading. For an adult learner with limited time the practical thresholds are smaller: roughly 100 kanji cover survival literacy (signs, basic menus, the most common labels), 300 to 500 cover comfortable everyday reading, 1,000 cover most newspapers and casual literature, and the full 2,136 cover adult-level print with confidence.
What makes kanji feel intimidating is not the total count but the structure beginners do not yet see. Almost every kanji is built from a small set of recurring components called radicals, the 部首 in Japanese, of which there are 214 in the canonical Kangxi system inherited from Chinese lexicography. A learner who memorizes the most common 50 or so radicals can decompose almost any new kanji into recognizable parts, which turns a wall of strokes into a small set of building blocks. The radical for water (氵 in component form, derived from 水) appears in 海 sea, 河 river, 泳 to swim, 湖 lake. The radical for hand (扌 in component form, derived from 手) appears in 持 to hold, 押 to push, 打 to hit. Lessons that lead with radicals and then build characters from them are noticeably faster than lessons that introduce each kanji as a separate visual unit, which is the trap of unguided self-study.
The stroke-order rules that govern handwriting matter more than they look. The standard ministry-of-education stroke order, taught from grade 1 in Japan, follows consistent principles: top before bottom, left before right, horizontal before vertical when they cross, outside before inside, the bottom horizontal last when it closes a frame. These are not preferences. They are what makes your handwriting legible at speed, what makes the character you write resemble the printed character, and what builds the muscle memory you rely on when characters get more complex in the third year of study. A tutor watching your pen catches the wrong starting stroke or the missed hook in the first week, before the habit hardens.
The other feature of kanji that surprises beginners is that almost every character has more than one reading. Japanese inherited kanji from Chinese starting in the fifth century, and as the borrowings arrived in successive waves the original Chinese pronunciations were preserved alongside the existing Japanese words for the same concept. The result is that most kanji carry at least two readings: the on'yomi, the Sino-Japanese reading derived from Chinese pronunciation, used most often in compound words made of two or more kanji, and the kun'yomi, the native Japanese reading, used most often when the kanji stands alone or carries Japanese verb and adjective endings. The character 水 reads sui in the compound 水曜日 suiyoobi (Wednesday, water-day) and mizu when it stands alone meaning water. The character 人 reads jin or nin in compounds (日本人 nihonjin, Japanese person; 三人 san-nin, three people) and hito alone meaning person. Some characters have three or four readings; a small set has more than ten. The way through this is not flashcard brute force but vocabulary-anchored learning: you learn the kanji in the context of the word it appears in, which means you learn the reading that matters for that word, and the other readings arrive when you meet the other words.
A practical sequence works for most adult learners. The first 80 kanji are the grade-1 set: 一二三四五六七八九十 (the numbers one through ten), 日月火水木金土 (the days of the week and the natural-element kanji), 山川 (mountain and river), 大小中 (big, small, middle), 上下左右 (up, down, left, right), 人口目耳 (person, mouth, eye, ear), 男女子 (man, woman, child), and the rest of the everyday vocabulary a Japanese first-grader meets. These 80 are achievable in a month of daily practice with a tutor and they cover a striking amount of basic signage. The next 160 take a learner through the grade-2 set and into the JLPT N5 territory, which is roughly 100 characters; JLPT N4 sits around 300, N3 around 650, N2 around 1,000, and N1 at the full joyo set of 2,136. The JLPT is administered by the Japan Foundation and Japan Educational Exchanges and Services and is the standard outside benchmark adult learners use to mark their progress. Our blog post on the 100 most commonly used kanji gives a useful preview of what the first six months actually look like.
A word on Remembering the Kanji, the Heisig method named for James Heisig's 1977 book, which proposes learning all 2,200 joyo kanji by associating each with an English keyword and a memorable visual story before learning any Japanese reading or vocabulary. It works well for some learners, particularly those with strong visual memory and the patience for an upfront six- to twelve-month investment that produces zero spoken Japanese. It works poorly for others, who find the disconnect between memorizing English keywords and not being able to read Japanese words demotivating. A tutor can help you decide whether the Heisig path or the more standard vocabulary-anchored path fits your goals, and many serious adult learners blend the two: Heisig-style visual stories for the characters they are introduced to, paired with the actual Japanese words and readings the character appears in.
One honest thing worth saying. Kanji is the part of Japanese that takes years rather than weeks, and the timeline scales with how much daily exposure you can sustain. A student doing 15 minutes a day reaches the joyo set in roughly four years; 30 minutes a day in roughly two; an hour a day in roughly one. The reason most self-taught learners stall at 200 to 400 kanji is not that the work gets harder, it is that without a tutor the natural pacing collapses and review backlog accumulates faster than new characters land. A tutor sets the pace, builds the review schedule, and catches the wrong reading before it becomes the only reading you remember.
Our tutors who teach kanji are native speakers and longtime bilinguals who have walked adult learners through everything from the first 80 characters to JLPT N1 preparation. They calibrate to your real goal. A traveler aiming at restaurant menus and transit signs needs a different first 200 kanji than a graduate student preparing to read academic Japanese. Lessons cover radical decomposition, stroke order, the most useful first readings, spaced review, and the patient daily work that turns 2,136 characters from a wall into a road. When kanji is in place, the rest of the language opens fully.
What you'll cover
Lessons & classes tailored to Kanji
Radical-first character decomposition
Lessons lead with radicals rather than treating each kanji as a separate visual unit. The most common 50 radicals are taught in the first two weeks and become the building blocks for every new character. This is the single biggest pace difference between guided study and unguided flashcard work, and it is the reason students with tutors typically reach 500 kanji at twice the speed of self-taught learners. Our blog post on the 100 most commonly used kanji is the natural companion drill.
On'yomi and kun'yomi taught through vocabulary
Rather than memorizing all readings of each character upfront, you learn the reading that matters for the word the kanji appears in. 水曜日 suiyoobi teaches the on'yomi sui in context; 水 mizu alone teaches the kun'yomi naturally. The other readings arrive as you meet the other words. This vocabulary-anchored approach prevents the common self-study trap of memorizing isolated readings that never get used.
Stroke order, handwriting, and reading speed
Stroke order is taught from the first character and watched on every new one, because the wrong order at character 50 multiplies into trouble at character 500. Reading speed is built in parallel through short graded readings, NHK Easy News once the first 200 are in place, and the early kanji columns of Genki by Banno and colleagues or Minna no Nihongo. The goal is recognition at glance, not just recall with effort.
JLPT preparation and the path to fluency
Most adult learners eventually orient their kanji study against the JLPT levels: N5 (~100 kanji), N4 (~300), N3 (~650), N2 (~1,000), N1 (~2,136). The tests are administered twice yearly by the Japan Foundation and Japan Educational Exchanges and Services and are the standard external benchmark for Japanese proficiency. Your tutor can build a study plan toward whichever level matters for your goal. The same kanji foundation supports paths into conversational Japanese or focused exam prep.
FAQ
About Kanji lessons & classes
How many kanji do I actually need to learn?
Depends on what you want to do. For survival reading on a Japan trip (signs, basic menus, transit), around 100 kanji is enough. For comfortable everyday reading in messages, social media, and casual literature, 300 to 500. For newspapers, novels, and most adult print, around 1,000. For full adult literacy without gaps, the joyo set of 2,136 characters defined by the Japanese government. Almost no foreign learner needs the joyo set right away, and many never need it; pick the threshold that matches your actual goal.
Should I learn on'yomi or kun'yomi first?
Neither in isolation. Learn kanji in the context of the words they appear in, and the readings will land naturally. If you study the character 人 by first memorizing that it reads jin, nin, hito, and ri, you will forget three of those within a week. If you study it through the words 日本人 nihonjin (Japanese person), 三人 san-nin (three people), and 人 hito alone (person), each reading sticks because each is tied to a real word you can use. Vocabulary-anchored study is faster than reading-anchored study for almost every adult learner.
Is Remembering the Kanji actually useful?
For some learners, very. James Heisig's 1977 book proposes learning all 2,200 joyo kanji by associating each with an English keyword and a visual story, before learning any Japanese readings. It works well for students with strong visual memory and the patience for a six- to twelve-month investment that produces no spoken Japanese. It works poorly for students who find that gap demotivating. Many serious learners blend the two approaches: Heisig-style stories for character recall plus vocabulary-anchored learning for readings. Your tutor can help you decide which path fits.
Why do the same kanji sometimes have totally different meanings?
Because Japanese borrowed kanji from Chinese in successive waves over fifteen hundred years, and the meanings sometimes shifted in transit or diverged later. The character 手 reliably means hand in both languages, but 大丈夫 in Japanese means it's okay or I'm fine, while the same three characters in modern Chinese mean great husband or hero. Compounds are where the divergence shows up most. Within Japanese itself, multiple meanings for a single character usually trace to the on'yomi and kun'yomi system, where one Chinese-derived reading and one or more native Japanese readings cover related but distinct senses.
How long does it take to master 2,000 kanji?
Most adults reach the full joyo set in two to four years of daily study, with the timeline scaling closely to daily minutes. At an hour a day, roughly one year. At 30 minutes a day, roughly two years. At 15 minutes a day, roughly four years. The work is sustainable rather than intense if the daily session is small and the review schedule is consistent. Most self-taught learners who stall at 200 to 400 kanji do so because review backlog accumulates faster than new characters land. A tutor sets the pace and the review structure that prevents that collapse.
Do I need to learn handwriting, or is recognition enough?
Depends on your goal. For digital-only reading and typing, you can get to comfortable literacy with recognition alone, since Japanese input methods convert romaji or kana to kanji from a candidate list and you only need to recognize the right one. For writing by hand, signing forms, taking notes, or any traditional context, handwriting matters and stroke order matters with it. Most tutors recommend learning handwriting for at least the first 500 characters because the muscle memory deepens recognition; after that, many students drop active handwriting practice and continue with recognition only.
Are your tutors native Japanese speakers?
Most are native speakers from across Japan, and a few are longtime bilinguals who have taught kanji to adult learners for years and know exactly where English speakers stall. Each tutor's bio specifies their background and teaching experience. For a long-arc subject like kanji, the tutor's own pedagogical approach (radical-first or vocabulary-first, Heisig-friendly or not) matters as much as native-speaker status, and we share that on the bios.
Can I take kanji lessons online?
Yes. Most of our Japanese tutors teach online via Zoom or Jitsi, and kanji lessons translate well to video with a notebook camera for handwriting and screen sharing for reading practice. A few tutors also teach in person around Los Angeles. The booking widget on each tutor's profile shows their available formats.
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Book a free 30-minute trial with one of our personally vetted tutors. Private lessons or small-group classes — your choice.