We are going to start by learning ひらがな (Hiragana). So what is Hiragana? Hiragana characters are the basic syllables of the Japanese language. You can think of them like letters in English. There are 46 Hiragana characters in total and they each represent a different sound. If you can't learn Hiragana, you can't learn Japanese.

So how do we go about learning Hiragana? Well, we will start in the same way you learned English letters, by writing them. So get out the pen and paper because we've got some writing to do! Now, each Hiragana has a stroke order, meaning which part you draw first. You should learn this, however, we are not going to get into this at the moment.

This video by 万葉学舎 is extremly useful as it shows how to write every Hiragana and how to pronounce them. After you have learned Hiragana, you will need to learn カタカナ (Katakana). Katakana is basically a different font of Hiragana and is pronounced the same way. here is a playlist by 万葉学舎 that shows how to write all Katakana.

Now you know how to read and write Hiragana and Katakana, congratulations! Give yourself a pat on the back! Now, back to learning Japanese. The final type of writing you need to know is 漢字 (Kanji). Kanji is what builds most words and while it can look daunting, you'll find that it actually makes Japanese a million times better. Kanji is essential to Japanese, as it lets you distinguish words from the surrounding Kana (Hiragana and Katakana).

Now, you might think that you can just learn it like you learned Hiragana and Katakana, however, that is not the case. The reason being, Kanji is not just 46 characters, but rather more than 2,000 characters. If you think this is insane and it would be impossible to learn every Kanji, you are not alone. I think most learners of Japanese quit after they find out about Kanji or they just don't use learn Kanji at all. This is not a good thing as if you are going to learn a language, you should learn the actual language.

So, how can you go about learning Kanji? Well, it's more simple than you think. Don't try to learn Kanji by itself. You want to only learn a Kanji when you are learning a word. This way you won't become overwhelmed and it will stick easier than if you learned them out of context.