All of this is certainly something and people be recommending writing, but one thing being true across the board, is that children have shitty handwriting. In comparison, youre doing fine. I think one thing that can easily be hung up on is it looking like this “picture” perfect handwriting when that is not the case. Ive had to read some handwriting where the radicals of a single Kanji look like two seperate Kanji and man, it puts my brain to work for sure. All the recommendations looks good, and the more you write the better and easier it becomes. 頑張ってよ！
I did not know about this app. Somewhat skeptical, but loaded it anyway to try it out — and it’s amazing! This will definitely fit into my kanji writing practice.
投稿してくれてありがとう!
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From skim reading I cant see if anyone has mentioned this but according to what I’ve learned theres three important points of writing in Japanese- tomeru, haneru, and harau.
Actually there are more, but this is what I was taught.
Tomeru is when you stop the stroke firmly.
Haneru is releasing the stroke with a little flick.
Harau is to make a sweeping stroke.
Imagine you’re writing with a brush when you do these. This way, you will apply the pressure properly when you imagine the flick or sweep, rather than just “drawing” them.
I found this diagram showing the tomeru and harau points of あ
I recommend working on these elements and looking for guides with them in order to make your handwriting neater. They also apply to kanji btw!
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One thing I started doing recently with Ringotan is writing 4 of the vocabulary words provided alongside using the app when I add new kanji like so
This helps practice writing more as well as help retain the kanji used in common vocab.
I think for Ringotan specfically, it’s nice to use the app directly for retaining stroke order, but neat handwriting only comes from pen and paper. I do think the actual stroke patterns used in ringotan show good principles like stroke ends, keeping horizontal lines sloping upward slightly, etc. so it can be a good reference too, but when drawing with my finger I dont worry too much about that aspect.
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Ringotan is my recommendation as well. It monitors your progress with each character and puts them back into the “Review” more when it’s one you struggle with. It even emphasizes stroke order (which has been kicking my butt 
). Overall it has been immensely helpful for me!
That’s the one! Thanks for beating me to it, since I have clearly not been paying attention to the responses.
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