Category: Learn Japanese

My dad has also been learning Japanese and he found this awesome website that I want to share with you called Uchisen.

If you are just a beginner like me, you will probably want to start with Uchisen Preschool.

They have an excellent explanation of the three Japanese language writing systems!

There are also drills for Hiragana and Katakana where you type in the romanji (English) letters that represent the kana syllable. See image below.

To see my full video showing how I used the Uchisen Preschool Hiragana and Katakana Drills, see my instagram reel here.

Once you feel comfortable with Hiragana and Katakana, Uchisen also provides excellent lessons on Kanji as well. Below is an example.

The visual design of each page is so approachable and friendly! It even includes a GIF with the stroke order!

I have had a book called Japanese Kanji Power for about 10 years and it has just been sitting on the shelf because I was so intimidated and overwhelmed by it. Below is the explanation for the kanji for tree.

There is no doubt that Japanese Kanji Power is a fantastic and useful resource – but I think combined with the approachability and user-friendliness of a website like Uchisen, a student of Japanese language would be best served by using both!

Getting started with Japanese pretty much always begins with learning hiragana, one of two syllabic alphabets.

This is because all words in Japanese can be written using hiragana. Even if you don’t know any kanji (Japanese writing based on Chinese characters), theoretically you can communicate exclusively using hiragana.

After practicing Japanese for 6 months with Duolingo, I can recognize almost all hiragana characters with relative ease. I am still a beginner at Japanese, but putting in even 2 minutes a day definitely makes a difference!

Our original Hiragana Stickers are a bit cost-prohibitive / expensive.

Our NEW Hiragana stickers are much more economically priced with two sets of the alphabet per sticker sheet and an increasing discount as you purchase more sheets. 🙂

These stickers can be used with flashcards, in your notebook, or anywhere that might assist your Japanese studies.

I have included “desu” ですand “desuka” ですか in the last column as these are common phrases in hiragana used by beginners to express simple concepts.

“Desu” です is the present tense of the verb “to be” and “ka” か is used at the end of the sentence if it is a question. There are no question marks used in Japanese. How about that か