Welcome to JapaneseWizard.com! This website will help you get started in learning how to speak and write in Japanese. In this site, you’ll find writing tutorials and PDF practice sheets to help you master Japanese scripts, as well as some basic words and phrases so you can communicate as quickly as possible. We have also researched the best websites and books to help you on your language learning adventure.

One of the first challenges you’ll face in learning Japanese is mastering its writing system. Japanese uses a combination of three kinds of scripts: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Romaji (the Roman form of the syllables) are rarely used by the Japanese, but we’ll be using them to help you learn the scripts.

Hiragana is the first script that Japanese children learn in school, so you will do well to start with hiragana. The basic hiragana table and modified hiragana table will introduce you to all possible characters and sounds that you need to learn Japanese. Remember that stroke order is important in writing Japanese so that you get the right shape. The best way to learn hiragana is to practice writing them with pen and paper, so we have PDF worksheets to guide you. After you’ve mastered hiragana, test your skills with our hiragana quiz.

Katakana are used for words derived from foreign languages, such as konpyuta (computer). If you’re not Japanese, katakana is the script that you use to write your name, so learning katakana is important. The katakana tutorial will introduce you to this script. Just like hiragana, katakana is divided into basic katakana and modified katakana . Katakana characters are used for onomatopoeic words and technical or scientific terms. It’s also used for emphasis. Try writing katakana using our PDF worksheets and test your knowledge with our katakana quiz.

Kanji are similar to Chinese characters. They are ideographs used for nouns and verb stems. Since there are no spaces in Japanese writing, Kanji assists in distinguishing words in a sentence. You can get familiar with 80 basic kanji in this site.
We hope you will enjoy and find this site useful. Whether you are a student, young or young at heart, a business person dealing with Japanese, or a tourist traveling to Japan, we think you will benefit from our introduction to the wonderful Japanese language. We wish you good luck or as the Japanese say, Gambatte ne!