I’m going to assume that you would like to learn Japanese. If not, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. However, before you go any further I want you to understand that learning Japanese is a task that, unless you are a genius, will take a lot of work and time (and I emphasis ‘a lot’).

So, if you’re still with me, your first question is what should I study first, right? I think the best and most rewarding thing to start with is written Japanese. Japanese consists of four written systems. Three of these systems are what everyone in the English speaking world recognizes as foreign. While the fourth uses our own roman alphabet. While it is possible to learn to speak Japanese using only the roman alphabet, I don’t think anyone would recommend it. With that said, two of these three native scripts will be your first goal.

Go ahead and CLICK HERE to watch a video about the writing systems. Your first task is to be able to recognize and write both hiragana and katakana. It may seem difficult at first, but I assure you with bit of time here and there you can have them memorized in no time.

Luckily, there are countless tools available online to assist you in learning to recognize hiragana and katakana. Here are a couple of my favorite sites.

Hiragana and Katakana Practice: Real Kana – www.realkana.com

• This is a hiragana and katakana memory game. I used this a lot when I was studying them. Good luck!

Online Japanese Language and Culture Resource Community – http://www.japanese-online.com/

• Sign up for an account and click the ‘download gallery’ in the sidebar. Be sure to check out the rest of their resources as well!

Keep me up to date on your progress! I would love to hear from you!

kyleeppard@lrnjapanese.com