Studying Japanese is not easy. Butwith enough motivation and resourcesyou can definitely learn at least the basics and slowly progress into fluency with actual usage. Butwhere does one start? I am not a language teacherand I have mostly learned Japanese through self-studybut I want to help out beginners in getting into the language as easy as possible. To be honestI am far from my goals in terms of learning Japanese but I like sharing what I know! There’s a lot of resources on the internet alreadyand it can get overwhelming so I hope I get to share something simpleeasy to understandand something that will really help you out if you’re interested in the language.

My recommendation is to first learn how to read and write Kanaspecifically Hiragana. This is a good starting point for getting into Japanese as it is relatively easy to memorize and to write. Hiragana is used widely as 1) furiganaused to explain how a Kanji is read; 2) to conjugate or transform verbs and adjectives for various purposes; and 3) to spell out words for young children who are just starting out with reading/writing Japanese. After you build your mastery of Hiraganayou can then move on to Katakanawhich you can think of as a counterpart of each hiragana character you’ve learned. Katakana is used mostly for loan wordsforeign words/proper nouns and onomatopoeia (spelling out sounds).

As you learn Japanese vocabulary by reading words spelled out in Kanayou can now start learning how to make basic sentences using Japanese characters. Then you can start getting familiar with Kanjior the Chinese characters normally used to spell out the words you’ve learned. Learning Kanji is intimidating considering there are over 2,000 characters used normally in daily life – but there are also techniques to this. Let’s cross this bridge when we get therebut for now – let’s start with Hiragana!

Here’s the first five characters for this lesson! I’ve added actual words spelled out in Hiragana so that you can start learning vocabularytoo!

This is how you write AIUEand O in hiragana.

You can refer to the video below for the pronunciation and stroke order. Specific to stroke orderit’s important to learn it right the first time to prevent having to fix bad habits later on when you’re already used to it.

Take your time to practice writing each characterand also start learning the word examples provided! You can create your own flashcards if you want and build it up for each lesson!

If you have any questionsfeel free to drop it in the comments below.