# Bunmyaku: Japanese Reading — Vocabulary, kanji, furigana > Vocabulary, kanji, furigana (iPhone/iPad app by Jakub Dwojak.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/bunmyaku-japanese-reading/id6804188062 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Jakub Dwojak](https://appshunter.io/developer/6801993670) - Category: Education, Reference - Price: Free with in-app purchases - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 18.0 · 7 MB - Languages: American English, Polish - Released: 2026-09-01 - Data updated: 2026-09-14 - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/bunmyaku-japanese-reading/id6804188062/reviews.md ## What is Bunmyaku? You look up a word, you learn it, you tick it off. A week later it appears in a sentence and you stop dead. That gap is what Bunmyaku trains. Not kanji in isolation, not a deck of flashcards – words in the place they actually occur. The whole JLPT range, N5 through N1. READING AND MEANING ARE DIFFERENT MEMORIES You can understand 改善 in every sentence you meet and still not be able to say かいぜん. Most apps average those into one number per word. This one keeps them apart: 改善 Meaning 91 % Reading 54 % After that you know what to open. After "改善 72 %" you know nothing. FOUR WAYS TO BE ASKED How a word is read here. What it means here. Type the reading from memory. Pick the written form from four that look and sound alike. Each measures something the others cannot, and you never know which is coming. THE SENTENCE IS NOT DECORATION Every word sits in an original sentence written for it. The context has to settle the reading and the sense – otherwise the question is not asked. FURIGANA THAT DOES NOT GIVE THE ANSWER AWAY Readings above kanji make a sentence approachable instead of a wall. But the reading you are being asked about is always hidden – even with furigana switched on. The setting says what you want to see; the question says what it is not allowed to show. WRONG ANSWERS THAT TEACH The wrong options are not random kana. They are the mistakes people actually make: the reading without the sound change, the long vowel dropped, the small っ missing, or another reading the kanji really has. HONEST ABOUT WHAT IS UNCERTAIN Some words genuinely have two readings. 家 is いえ and うち; 明日 is あした and あす. Those are never turned into a four-button question, because an option holding correct Japanese marked wrong teaches an untruth whichever one you pick. They are shown side by side instead. REVIEWS THAT ROTATE THE SENTENCE What comes back on a schedule is the word and the skill – not the flashcard. When 経験 is due, a different sentence is chosen from its pool. Otherwise you recognize the card by its first three characters and stop reading. CONJUGATED WORDS, NOT JUST DICTIONARY FORMS 読んでいた in a sentence is linked to 読む. Bunmyaku does not teach conjugation, but it does not pretend words only appear in their dictionary shape. ENGLISH AND POLISH Interface and content switch independently. YOUR OWN WORDS, FROM WHAT YOU READ Save a sentence from a manga or a textbook – typed in, or scanned from a photo the phone reads by itself. The model pulls out the words worth keeping, adds their readings, and lets them into your reviews. An extra layer, entirely optional: without it the rest of the app counts progress and due dates the same, and every call is on your explicit request. PRIVACY No account, no analytics, no ads. Study, review and scanning work offline, and your progress stays on your phone. The network is used only by AI analysis, and only when you invoke it: the sentence you caught, or a catalog word, goes to the server – not your study history, nothing about you, and never a photo. FREE AND PAID N5 is free in full – every word, all four question types, reviews, progress and the backup file, plus a few AI analysis calls a month. Levels N4, N3, N2 and N1 are bought one at a time, in bundles, or all at once – once, no account, no expiry; each brings cross-level practice with it. Anyone who bought Premium earlier gets N2 and N1 at no extra cost. AI analysis is a separate subscription, because it is the only part that costs something each time it is used: PLN 14.99 monthly or PLN 119.99 yearly, auto-renewing, cancellable in your Apple ID settings. It does not cover JLPT levels. Also from the same author: Kaname – Japanese Grammar, Katsuyokei – Conjugation, Joshi – Japanese Particles, and Kazoekata – Japanese Counters. TERMS Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://jd-japanese.pl/bunmyaku/1.2/en/privacy.html ## Pricing and in-app purchases Base price: Free. **One-time purchases** | Purchase | Price | Type | | --- | --- | --- | | Bunmyaku Premium | $6.99 | one-time | ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.2.7 — 2026-09-14 Review reminders come back The reminder queue was clearing itself moments after it was built, so after the first day no reminder ever arrived. Now it does. If you have reminders switched on there is nothing to do – the queue rebuilds itself the next time you open the app. Level word lists open without a stall The level screen was recomputing the same figures once for every row – several hundred times over on N2. It works them out once. You will notice it most on levels with hundreds of words, and right after answering a question. The "Sentence translation" setting describes what it does The caption claimed there is no translation at a question. There is – at a question about a reading, because a sentence you cannot read teaches nothing. At a question about the meaning or the written form it is still held back, because it would hand you the answer. Sister app icons are drawing again Some rows in "Your Japanese" and some cards in Settings had an empty square where the icon belongs. The names of the icon files had drifted apart from the names the app was asking for, and a missing icon draws nothing rather than complaining. You decide which family apps you see Separately for the recommendation cards in Settings and for the rows in "Your Japanese", because those two lists answer two different questions. Hiding deletes nothing – a hidden row comes back with one tap, and the section says outright when it is showing an incomplete picture. ### 1.2.6 — 2026-09-10 "Your Japanese" now covers all ten apps Four sisters joined the family section: Keigo for polite Japanese, Onomatope for mimetic words, Kifuku for pitch accent, and Shindan for measuring your level. They sit at the end of the list, in the order they were released – the rows above them have not moved, so the picture you are used to stays where it was. Four new cards under "More Japanese Practice" Each of the four carries its own sentence about what that app does, and each opens its App Store page directly – no search results to pick through, and nothing that looks like a card leading nowhere. Progress from the four new apps finally shows up If you already had any of them installed, their progress was not being read at all – the family section only looked for apps it knew about, and those four were not on the list. Nothing was lost: the numbers were on your phone the whole time and appear as soon as you open this version. ### 1.2.5 — 2026-09-08 A WORD AI KEEPS FAILING NOW SAYS SO If buying a sentence failed, the button came back looking exactly as promising as the first time — and each press is two calls to the model. One word was asked five times before it worked. After two failures in a row the card now says what went wrong: that the reading over the word kept coming out wrong, or that the sentence came back without the word in it. The word is not closed for good — open the app again and the button is back. "SENTENCES" THAT WERE ONLY THE WORD ITSELF ARE GONE For a word carrying a particle — 文章を書く — the model sometimes answered with the word and a full stop, which is technically a sentence and teaches nothing: the drill built from it blanks out the whole line. Those are refused now, and any that were already saved are removed the first time you open this version. The word simply goes back to offering the button. WITH A SUBSCRIPTION, THE COUNT SAYS "THIS PERIOD" RATHER THAN "THIS MONTH" Your monthly allowance runs from the day you subscribed, not from the first of the month — so if you subscribed on the 20th, it renews on the 20th. The date shown was always right; the sentence beside it said "this month" anyway. The free allowance is unchanged: that one really is calendar months. ### 1.2.4 — 2026-09-07 WORDS AI COULD NOT WRITE A SENTENCE FOR ARE OUT OF THE DEAD END If buying a sentence ever failed, the word was left with three progress bars instead of four and no way back — the message said "try again" while the button was already gone. Restarting did nothing, and restoring a backup did nothing either, because the state traveled with it. Those words are unlocked the first time you open this version, with no prompt and nothing spent. TRY AGAIN COMES BACK TO THE WORD CARD, AND THE MESSAGE SAYS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED "AI could not write a sentence for this word" was sometimes untrue: the model did answer, it just wrote a sentence without the word in it, and we were the ones who turned it down. That is what it says now, and the button stays, because a second try on the same word can work. One thing is unchanged: when the model answers that this word has no ordinary sentence, you get its reason rather than another attempt. QUESTIONS ABOUT A READING NOW SHOW WHAT THE SENTENCE MEANS A sentence you cannot understand is not context — and this app promises to teach words where they stand. Both "how is this read" and typing the reading now carry the sentence translation underneath, on the same Translation setting that governs it after an answer. Questions about meaning do not get it and will not: there the translation is the answer. THE APP STARTS FIVE TIMES FASTER The 3051-word catalog was prepared on every launch, before the first frame appeared. Measured: 86% of that time went into 70 calls of one helper loop that picks wrong answers. The questions and their choices are identical to before — checked by comparing the whole catalog, entry by entry. QUESTIONS ABOUT MEANING NAME THE WORD INSTEAD OF POINTING AT IT The prompt used to read "What does the marked word mean here?", and the marking is a color. If you use VoiceOver, there was no way to tell which word was meant — the screen reader read out the whole sentence with nothing to single it out, so the question could not be answered. The prompt now says it outright: "What does 「本」 mean here?". 23 WORDS IN N5 GET A SECOND SENTENCE Nearly every word in the catalog has exactly one sentence, so a second review of the same skill showed the very same screen, character for character. The first twenty-three N5 words now have two contexts each and the rotation has something to choose from. The rest of the level follows in later releases. ### 1.2.3 — 2026-09-06 QUESTIONS ABOUT A SPELLING CAN NO LONGER BE SOLVED WITHOUT READING A SINGLE CHARACTER Asked how しょうじき is written, you were shown 正直 next to 直す, 直る and 正しい — three spellings with kana in them and one without. The answer was the odd one out, and counting kana was enough to find it. Measured across the whole catalog: 854 of these questions handed out at least one variant you could reject knowing nothing, and 35 could be solved outright. Every variant now has to fit the reading on screen. NO WRONG ANSWER SAYS THE SAME THING AS THE RIGHT ONE Asked what 開く means in its sentence, you could meet both "to open (a book, one's eyes)" and "to open" on the buttons below. Two defensible answers, one of them scored as a miss. Variants that merely restate the correct meaning, more narrowly or more broadly, are now kept off the screen. MY WORDS GETS THE SEARCH FIELD AND THE PERCENTAGES THE CATALOG HAS Two lists doing the same thing looked like two different screens: the catalog searched by kanji, kana, romaji and meaning and said how much of each level was done, while your own caught words offered a count and no way to find anything. Both screens now work the same way. The percentage here counts your own words at that level, not the catalog's. THE WORD BEING ASKED ABOUT IS MARKED IN YOUR ACCENT COLOR It used to be the accent color and an underline. The underline now shows up only where color alone cannot carry the difference — that is, when Differentiate Without Color is switched on in Settings. Everyone else gets the cleaner sentence, and this is the same marking the sister apps use. ## More apps by Jakub Dwojak - [Kaname — Japanese Grammar](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kaname-japanese-grammar/id6801993668) - [Katsuyokei — Conjugation](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/katsuyokei-conjugation/id6802813564) - [Joshi — Japanese Particles](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/joshi-japanese-particles/id6803144744) - [Kazoekata — Japanese Counters](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kazoekata-japanese-counters/id6803676309) - [Kuzushi — Casual Japanese](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/kuzushi-casual-japanese/id6805788146) All apps by Jakub Dwojak: https://appshunter.io/developer/6801993670 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-14.*