The Hentaigana App has finally been released for iOS (it came out for Android a few weeks ago, but as is well known Apple outsources app review to starships traveling at relativistic speeds). This is apparently the first fruit of Uniqlo founder Yanai Tadashi's donation to UCLA to "globalize Japanese humanities".

What is the Hentaigana App? A flashcard program and quick reference for individual hentaigana. There are apparently plans to add multi-kana phrases at some point, but no kanji, so this isn't a complete "learn cursive Japanese writing" app. On the other hand, as a hentaigana-only app, it's much nicer than it had to be, with most of the visuals taken from Waseda's collection of scanned books. This doesn't make the app any more informative, say, than a hypothetical version with newly created vector-graphic characters and iOS 7-style flat color backgrounds. But it does make it more involving. Japanese calligraphers are fussy about paper for a reason, after all.

There's no getting around the need to drill hentaigana. This app lets you drill in idle moments waiting for the bus, rather than at a desk flipping back and forth between multiple reference works. And it's free. What more could you want?