My second Android app is now available on the market. Flashkana is a simple flash cards style application to help you learn Japanese kana.

Go to Flashkana on the Android Market

Kana are the characters that build up the two Japanese syllabaries, Hiragana and Katakana. They are similar, but not identical to the concept of the roman alphabet, and learning them is the first step to understanding Japanese writing. There are over 200 kana, including all variants, so becoming familiar with the entire set takes some time. Flashkana helps you learn them in your own pace using the traditional flash cards method.

The app was in development for several months, using my spare time between other work. One of the biggest challenges was the card swiping mechanism. Android doesn’t have a built-in component for swiping pages left/right with your finger, so I had to write one myself. I also encountered very slow view rendering times, especially when creating 200+ cards, and eventually came to solution that used lots of lazy instantiation and a few threads.

The app is free, so head over to the Android market to take a look. You can also download my previous app if you like, a simple notepad designed for speed and simplicity.