A new app-roach!

Yes. Awful pun. Soz

After my time with the Lingolook app I launched into a series of App based learning experiments.

Learn Japanese with Phrases & Lessons by thejapanesepage.com 

I really liked this app but I didn't think the app guided your learning particularly well. Although at the point at which I started using this app I was still labouring under the dilution that I could get some basic Japanese under my belt without learning Hiragana and Katakana. You can't.
Once I gave in and decided to learn start learning Hiragana this app came into its own. It was great to have access to flash cards wherever I was and once I got more confident I was able to dip into the phrases to improve my ability to read the kana.

Japanese-hiragana by hk2006

This app is great fun, if a little childish and I got it to help me learn Hiragana as I was struggling. It functions almost entirely in Japanese and looks like a slightly modified version of something that might help young Japanese children to read and write Hiragana. There are several games within the app. My favourite is one where the app says a word and you have to tap the character that begins that word before the computer does. You can also trace the patters of the characters with your finger.

The apps were a great starting point but it took a lot of work with a notebook and pen to get the characters into my head. I still confuse some of them (especially as they can be written in slightly different ways) but these apps really helped to get me started and, most usefully I could do the exercises on the go.