The food ranges from the Classic Burger through to the Vegetable Tofu Burger, Avocado Burger and Teriyaki Spam Burger. As the name suggests everything is cooked fresh in-store and is delicious.

I can highly recommend the Teriyaki Chicken Burger and Fried Potato ^^

The Menu

Below is a section of the Japanese menu from Freshness Burger. If your Katakana needs a workout, try working out the names below each burger. To kick you off here’s a couple of simple ones: メニュー (Menu) and バーガー (Hamburger).

Note the small “ユ” in “メニュー”. You can see the normal ニ (ni) followed by a small ユ (yu), which becomes “nyu” by dropping the “i” from ニ (ni). The “ー” indicates a double-length vowel sound, which in this case is the “u”. So we end up with メ (me), ニュ (nyu), ー (u).

Download the full Japanese Menu and English Menu to how you went or to do more practice.

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If you walk in to any convenience store or supermarket in Japan you’ll see a few shelves filled with small bottles, which might remind you of how cough medicine is normally packaged.

However, these “genki” (health) drinks are hugely popular in Japan and are packed full of ingredients like Taurine, Guarana, Nicotine (!) and even small amounts of alcohol.

One of the most popular drinks on the market is Lipovitan (リポビタン – blue label with red writing above) with some variations containing 3000mg of Taurine, while Red Bull contains just 1000mg.

Pepsi Energy Cola (ペプシ エナジーコーラ) is marketed as a natural product with ingredients such as Royal Jelly extract, Caffeine, Arginine plus Ginseng (高麗人参) and Guarana extract.

It had a great taste but it didn’t seem to have much kick to it afterwards so I guess it’s back to the Red Bull for me! ^^

• ペプシエナジーコーラ (pe-pu-shi-e-na-ji-i-ko-o-ra)
• ローヤルゼリーエキス (ro-o-ya-ru-ze-ri-i-e-ki-su)
• カフェイン (ka-fe-i-n)
• アルギニン (a-ri-gi-ni-n)
• 高麗人参エキス (こう-らい-にん-じん)
• ガラナエキス (ga-ra-na-e-ki-su)
• リポビタン (ri-po-bi-ta-n)

Take Note

カフェイン contains the unusual フェ, which ends with the small “i”. When the small “e” (ェ) is coupled with “fu” (フ), the “u” is thrown away from “fu” (フ) and is replaced with the “e” to form “fe” (フェ).

The same thing happens with ファ (fa), フィ (fi) and フェ (fe). Read more about small katakana here →

Another unusual pairing is ゼリ, which you would naturally sound out as “ze-ri” and you would be correct. However, it is actually the katakana for “Jelly”.

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A good way to sharpen your skills in this area is to switch your whole computer over to the Japanese for a day. On the mac, you can change the language in your System Preferences -> Language & Text and I’m sure it’s a similar place in Windows.

System Preferences – English and Japanese

It’s a scary thought but having to work out all the menu items and buttons can be a fun way to improve your Japanese vocabulary. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you have to translate just to get around your computer. ^_^

ファ

The word “File” as you would know is at the top of the first menu of most applications on your computer. It is written as ファイル, which is broken down as “ファ (fa) イ (i) ル (ru)”. The tricky part is the first two Katakana.

You may not have noticed but the katakana after フ is actually a small “ァ” and not the normal size “ア”. So when you pair “フ (fu)” with a small “ァ” the combination becomes “ファ” and is pronounced “Fa” and not the expected “Fua” with the larger ア.

The combination of “ファ” and “イ” gives us the “Fai” sound like in “Taiwan”. That sound together with ル (ru) gives us “Fai-ru” or “File”. Remember there is no “L” in the Japanese language.

ウィ

The ウィ sound is another katakana combination that you may not have encountered before. While it’s not rare, it’s certainly not something that you will see in most everyday textbooks.

The combination consists of “ウ (u)” and a “ィ (i)”. As with the example above the second katakana is smaller than normal and as such it performs a different function than a regular “イ” – like in the word for internet (インターネット).

So when you find the combination of “ウィ”, it is pronounced “Wi”. The easiest way to remember it is that Nintendo’s Wii console is spelt “ウィー”. We have the “Wi” followed by the long dash (chōonpu), which doubles the vowel so we get “Wii”.

I hope that has given you enough to work on. Apart from the chōonpu, there are also plenty of little Katakana tricks below such as the small “ョ” in “ショ”, which gives you “sho” (shi plus o). There’s also “ディ”, which is “de” plus “i” to give us “di”.

Work through the explanations below and please leave a note in the comments if you have any questions.

Download my free Katakana Beginner’s Worksheet to practice the basic Katakana and also check out my small tsu article for a little bit more about how the small hiragana and katakana work.

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To get you started I’ll kick you off with a quick explanation of some of the more popular terms.

Rōmaji

Rōmaji (ローマ字), often mis-spelt as romanji or rōmanji, is where Japanese words are written in the Latin alphabet. For example, konnichiwa rather than こんにちわ.

Rōmaji is mostly used in Japan where tourists need to be able to read signs such as a railway station, hotel, airport or restaurant. The further you get out of the major cities, the less rōmaji you’ll see.

It is also frequently seen in Japanese dictionaries and textbooks for use by Japanese language beginners.

Rōmaji is commonly used to input Japanese characters into computers. Japanese keyboards mostly look exactly the same as Western keyboards. So to input a Japanese word, the user must type in the romanised version of the word (konnichiwa rather than こんにちわ) and the computer will do the rest.

I am not a fan of rōmaji for serious Japanese students as I feel it is better to learn kana and kanji than to rely on rōmaji. Use whatever you feel works best for your situation and level.

Furigana

Furigana (振り仮名) is the small hiragana or katakana printed next to or above a kanji character to explain its pronunciation. It is mostly found in children’s books or Japanese textbooks for beginners.

Furigana is especially helpful when you are making the transition to learning kanji and don’t yet know the many readings needed to be fluent at Japanese.

Hiragana

Hiragana is the first of three writing systems (hiragana, katakana and kanji) taught to Japanese children and most books for kids are written purely in hiragana. As they move in to grade one, kanji is gradually introduced and hiragana mostly removed. A typical university graduate is expected to know over 2000 kanji!

Although hiragana is used by children and replaced by kanji in grade school, it remains a very important part of Japanese as it is commonly found in the grammatical endings of nouns, verbs and adjectives, as well as for particles like が or から, and many other Japanese words that have no kanji equivalent.

Each hiragana is either an individual vowel or a consonant followed by a vowel. The exception, and there always is one, is “n” (ん).

Find out more about hiragana and download free worksheets here

Katakana

Katakana (カタカナ) is the second component of the Japanese writing system and is generally learnt alongside or after hiragana.

While a beginner may not initially be able to tell Katakana and Hiragana apart, with a little practice they are distinctively different.

Katakana is generally more angular and has short, straight strokes while hiragana is rounded and more cursive. The difference is much like in the English language where we start off writing in a printing-style before learning cursive writing as we move through school.

Katakana is predominately used to write foreign or loan words in Japanese.

In the photo above you can see the city and country names from around the world, which are all written in katakana as they are loan words.

Kanji

Kanji (漢字) are the characters that are used in the Japanese writing system along with hiragana and katakana. They were imported from China around 500AD although the timing of its use in Japan varies substantially.

Kanji are taught to Japanese children after learning hiragana and katakana and the Japanese government has strict sets of kanji that are to be learnt at each grade level. By the time a typical Japanese student finishes university they will know approx. 2000 kanji!

The list of 1,945 kanji that must be learnt be all Japanese students is known as Jōyō kanji.

Japanese school children learn 1006 kanji characters from grades one to six and a further 939 kanji characters in secondary school.

There are changes taking place in 2010 that will see the number of official “must-know” kanji move to over 2000.

The total kanji figure is debatable but is said to be around 50,000. Let’s be thankful we don’t need to know all of those!

Readings

Kanji readings fit into just two categories, On (On’yomi – Chinese reading) and Kun (Kun’yomi – Japanese reading).

The difficulty for beginners and advanced students alike is that most kanji have more than one reading. So on top of having to learn the approx. 2000 Jōyō kanji there are also multiple readings of each kanji that you must know.

Also, when you add two or more kanji together their meaning might change or expand making the concept different.

For example the kanji for “outside” is 外. This kanji has the On readings – ガイ (gai),  ゲ (ge) along with the Kun readings – そと (soto),  ほか (hoka),  はずす (hazusu),  はずれる (hazureru),  と- (to).

So when 外 is used in the context of “outside” on it’s own you might pronounce it – そと (soto). However when it is used in 外国 (gaikoku), which means foreign country (eg outside country) then you can see the ガイ (gai) reading is used along with こく (country).

The general rule is that kanji that are on their own are typically read using their kun’yomi, as in the そと (soto) example above.

Kanji that occur in compounds, which are two or more kanji together as in the 外国 (gaikoku) example above are generally read using on’yomi.

These are only general rules and there are many exceptions but that is beyond the scope of this article so I won’t confuse things too much. ^_^

Stroke Order

In Japanese, a stroke order refers to the order in which the strokes of a kana or kanji character are written.

As a general rule, strokes are written from top to bottom and left to right. When there are upper and lower parts of the kanji, the upper strokes are written first, then the lower.

It is debatable that you need to focus heavily on learning the exact stroke order for each kanji. My personal view is that it is a good discipline to have but if you are fluent with the rest of your Japanese, not knowing the stroke orders isn’t going to hold you back too much.

Kana

Kana is the word used to refer to both hiragana and katakana. When you hear someone say that you need to learn the “kana” when starting Japanese, that just means that you need to learn hiragana and/or katakana.

That’s all for now – I hope this has helped to clear up any questions you may have had about these terms. Please leave a comment if you want to know more or let me know if I have missed anything.

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Everyone learns a different way. It’s an obvious statement but one that bears thinking about when you’re attempting to learn a language.

For example, if you’re studying at school I guarantee that no-one bothered to ask you about how you wanted to learn Japanese?

In a typical classroom setting, you have no input in to what time of day you start or how many students are in your study group or what textbooks you use.

What if you learn better on your own? What if you don’t want to learn romaji? Maybe you’re better suited to learn kanji mnemonically rather than delving in to readings from day one?

For some of us, this type of disconnect between how we are taught and what we actually need to be able to learn, is enormous and it can seriously affect our ability to learn a language.

A common scenario is that on your first day of Japanese class you’re filled with anticipation at finally begin able to learn the language you love so much.

However, several months later, you’re lagging behind the class and have lost all motivation and even worse, you might be questioning your own intelligence. Am I just dumb? No you’re not – please read on.

Don’t Blame Yourself

Firstly if you’re reading my blog, your intelligence is beyond question – so no worries there at all ^_^

Secondly, don’t be too quick to blame yourself if you’re not at the level you think you should be. Perhaps the classroom environment and/or syllabus is just not right for you.

If you’re at a grade school there is not alot you can do about that but outside of school hours the time is your own and if you truly want to master Japanese then you’ll need to study the way that suits you and make up for the lost time in the classroom.

I’ve listed below several study variations that may help clarify in your own mind what works best for you. These thoughts apply to anyone studying Japanese – not just in school.

Goals versus Free-Form

You’re either a goal-orientated person or not. If you’re younger you may not know that yet but by the time you finish school you will.

Some people find setting personal goals to be claustrophobic and unnecessarily draconian. They would rather just take it easy, get the job done in their own time and on a timeline that suits them.

Others can’t function without goals. They need a short or long term goal to constantly maintain their motivation and feel rewarded by attaining their goals on schedule.

Both options are okay for the individual but our non-goal friends are probably not going to enjoy the classroom environment very much.

If you’re on the non-goal team, then after-hours tutoring is perhaps a better option for you or maybe teaching yourself on the interwebs. Both of these options will reduce any unnecessary or counter-productive stress caused by the classroom environment.

Be really careful not to allow the stringent nature of the classroom to dampen any enthusiasm you have for the language as it is very hard to regain that once it is lost.

Conversely, if you need to learn in a group make sure you put yourself out there and make it happen.

RTK versus JLPT

RTK or Remembering the Kanji is a well-known method of learning kanji and JLPT is of course the standard test worldwide for Japanese proficiency.

RTK focusses more on how a kanji is put together and is very visual whereas JLPT is pretty much a learn by rote system. RTK doesn’t teach the kanji readings at all (until RTK2) while JLPT starts with the whole package – kanji, radicals and readings – from day one.

If you’re struggling to remember any kanji in class then perhaps you’re more of a visual learner. In that case Remembering The Kanji may be more suited to your needs.

The trick is not to think there is only way to learn Japanese.

If something is feeling harder than it should be, make sure you look around for other options. You know you have what it takes to learn so don’t stop until you find the right method for you.

When you’re fluent Japanese, no-one is going to stop you mid-sentence and ask what method you used. If you’re fluent, you’re fluent – job done.

Classroom or Self-study

This is a big stumbling block for some people.

If you’re at school you have no choice but to learn with others in your classroom but if you’re working during the day and trying to self-study at night and getting nowhere then you might be someone who needs to learn in a group environment.

If you’re forced to self-study due to economic or time issues then make sure you get your face-to-face time with others online. Websites such as EduFire offer live video tuition for numerous languages including Japanese. You can then get your interaction fix while still self-studying.

Don’t give up now. Fix the problem by getting to the core issue of why you feel you’re not progressing. Only you know the answer to that question.

Morning or Night

Do you struggle to learn at different times of day?

Perhaps you work during the day and study Japanese at night and find yourself going nowhere fast?

Or maybe Japanese is your first class in the morning at school and you just can’t focus no matter how hard you try?

There’s morning people and night people. Some of us come alive the closer it gets to midnight while others are at their peak at 5am.

If you’re struggling at certain times of the day, then why not try re-arranging your day to see if that changes anything.

Instead of sitting down to study at 11pm, go to bed early and hit the books at 6am.

Give it a try – it might just be the thing that is holding you back.

がんばってね!

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Image Credit: Fey-Rayen (DeviantArt)

Whether you’re a beginner, advanced or somewhere in between, at some point in your Japanese studies you’ve probably “hit the wall”. I’m sure you know the feeling – you’re over it, you don’t want to see another kanji or verb conjugation as long as you live.

There are many reasons this can happen – perhaps you’re bored, too busy with school or work, sick and tired of studying or you’ve simply lost your motivation.

It happens to the best of us and it’s a common problem in any endeavour, not just learning Japanese. However, it’s the way you deal with the “wall” that will define your success or failure.

If you have read anything about successful people, a common thread is that they never give up.

It is what separates them from others who start a business and then get disillusioned when they’re not making $50,000 a week, a month after opening their restaurant and give up.

Perhaps they would have had a chance at making $50,000 a week but it would take 5 years of hard work and the determination to see it through. Either way, they’ll never know because they gave up.

The world is littered with the carcasses of great dreams that went nowhere because of a lack of staying power, focus and determination. It takes a certain person to push through the pain and keep going while others fall by the wayside.

The Tipping Point

The phrase “Tipping Point” comes from a book by Malcolm Gladwell, and basically means “the process in which, beyond a certain point, the rate at which the process proceeds increases dramatically.”

Put in the lingo of language learning it means that at a certain point everything just seems to come together.

Perhaps you’ve been studying hard for a few years and seemingly getting nowhere and suddenly there becomes a point where you just feel like it comes naturally. You’re not thinking about tenses and conjugations and how many strokes in each kanji – you’re just thinking in Japanese – it’s become part of you.

Right before this “tipping point” is where the problems lie. The years of study are taking their toll and you’re wondering if you’re ever going to be fluent. This is where many people just give up as the “wall” just seems to great to get over.

Remember The Reward

If you feel yourself losing focus or interest in your Japanese studies, it’s time to remind yourself of just how far you have come and what the rewards are for sticking with it.

Your goal may be as simple as personal improvement or as life-changing as moving to Japan to live and work. Both are valid reasons to push through any walls you hit along the way.

Value Your Progress

A great way to embolden yourself and also bring clarity and excitement back in to your daily studies is to look at how much you have achieved.

Even if it’s taken you three years to learn the basic hiragana and katakana then you’ve already accomplished what most of your friends and family will never do in their lifetime.

Just think about it – you can look at hiragana, which to others is a bunch of mindless squiggles, and make sense of it. That’s pretty impressive stuff.

It is too easy to dismiss your knowledge as “simple” but if it were that simple then everyone would know it.

Open one of your hiragana text books and show a friend or family member and I bet they won’t know what anything means and conversely I’m sure they’ll be very impressed when you can read a hiragana sentence out loud to them.

While it may seem like nothing, you’ve actually come a long way and you need to acknowledge that and use it to push yourself to the next level.

Have you ever visualised being able to read an entire Japanese newspaper or watching an entire Japanese TV show and being to able to understand everything?

Don’t think you could? Well you can – it’s just a matter of using the same skills that you used to learn hiragana and katakana – study, focus and determination.

Yes, it’s much, much harder but if 125 million Japanese can do it, so can you.

Name and Shame

If you need a kick along in the area of self-motivation then why not make your plans public? If you’re stuck on the first 100 kanji, then set yourself a goal to learn them by a certain date.

In my opinion there is no better motivation than to have your friends, workmates or classmates knowing about your goals. Post something on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or even your own blog. Outline what you plan to achieve and make it public.

I guarantee the next time you feel like watching TV rather than learning a few kanji, you’ll think twice about the consequences ^_^

It’s All About You

In the end you still have to really want to learn Japanese – there is no getting around that and it is the most powerful motivator.

You can’t be doing it just to hook up with the hot new Japanese exchange student in your class or because your Mum and Dad want you to. You have to want it badly and you have to want it all by yourself.

So if you’ve hit the wall, please don’t stop there. It’s a very long road to proficiency but it’s also very rewarding.

Imagine being able to fluently communicate in another language? It doesn’t get much better than that in my book.

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I stumbled on this juice bar at a train station in Tokyo and thought it would make a perfect image for my Japan Sign series.

There’s a great mixture of hiragana, katakana and kanji although I’ll mainly be looking at the katakana in today’s example. As always please feel free to work your way through the whole sign and see what you can work out.

Banana Juice (バナナジュース)

First up on the left we have Banana Juice (バナナジュース), which is entirely in Katakana. Banana is written as バナナ (ba-na-na) and juice is ジュース (ju-u-su).

While banana is straight forward, juice is a little more tricky as it has two problem areas for beginners – the small yu (ュ) joined to the ジ (ji) to form ジュ (ju) and then a ー, which doubles the vowel sound preceding it.

Small Kana

To arrive at the final syllable (ju), we need to start with シ (shi) and then add the double marks (ジ), known as dakuten, which then changes its meaning to ji. From there we add the small ュ (yu) to form ジュ (ju). The ー after ジュ doubles the vowel sound to get juu. Phew!

There are several hiragana/katakana that can be both normal and small size including ゃ (ya), ゅ (yu), ょ (yo) and tsu (っ) or in katakana ャ (ya), ュ (yu), ョ (yo) and tsu (ッ). Check out my little tsu article for more information.

There are two main rules to apply when a little kana follows a normal size kana.

The first rule is for two letter kana (eg most of them) – remove the last letter of the kana and add the full little kana. An example is きゃ (kya), which starts as き (ki) but when the little hiragana ゃ(ya) is added it becomes きゃ (kya).

When it comes to three-letter kana like し (shi), the rule changes. In this instance you remove the last letter and keep the first two to get しゃ (sha) rather than shya or sya as you might expect.

More Fruit

Mango Juice follows the same pattern with Mango written as マンゴ followed by ジュース (juice). Mango, like banana, is a loan word and as such is always written in katakana.

Our next sign is カシスと黒酢ジュース, which translates as Black Currant and Black Vinegar Juice.

The spelling of Black Currant (カシス ka-shi-su) comes from the word – Cassis – which means French Black Currants.

We then see the particle – と – that basically means “and”.

Finally we get to 黒酢ジュース.

黒酢 can be broken down as 黒 (くろ – black) and 酢 (ず – vinegar).

Kiwi and Apple Juice (キーウィとりんごジュース) is our last Japan Sign on the right.

Kiwi is another loan word so is written in katakana – キーウィ. We see the と particle again and then りんご, which you most likely know means “Apple”.

Well we’ve made it through all of the great fruit drinks on offer. I hope it’s been useful to you and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

The Breakdown

• Japan Signs: Virgin Bourbon
• Learn Katakana: Japanese Computer Terms
• The Tale of the Little Tsu
• Japan’s Most Awesome Freshness Burger
• Japan Signs: A Day At Ueno Zoo

I hate to drag up a photo from warmer days while those of you in the northern hemisphere are still freezing cold but here we go anyway ^_^

This was shot somewhere along the busy market streets of the famous Ameyoko in Ueno, Tokyo.

There is all sorts of produce available for sale including seafood, fruit and vegetables right through to shoes, t-shirts and jeans. The markets are always packed, which makes for an exciting place to visit when you’re next in Tokyo.

The fruit on a stick sells from just ¥100, which is a bargain I reckon, especially in Japan.

Almost all of the fruit in the signs are listed in Katakana so this is a great exercise to sharpen those skills if you’re just starting out with Japanese or getting rusty.

Here’s a few to get you started.

• Japan Signs: Krispy Kreme Crowds
• Japan Signs: Tokyo Fruit Juice Bar
• Japan Signs: Virgin Bourbon
• Japan Signs: Going Overseas?
• Japan Signs: No Crossing

I took this shot of an ad hanging on a train somewhere on the Yamanote line in Tokyo. I think it’s a great real-life example of the use of Katakana for foreign city or country names.

To start you off I’ll go through the first line and then you can take it from there.

We put all the first line together and get “Rondon” or London as it is known in English.

You may have noticed that the Japanese can’t pronounce “L” very well, and with good reason, as that letter/sound doesn’t exist in the Japanese language as is most often substituted with an “r” syllable like ra, ri, ru, re, ro.

To approximate the way the Japanese pronounce the “r” sound you need to think of a tone halfway between and the English R and L.

Those of you that are very new to Katakana will probably be wondering what that extra syllable that looks like a dash (ー) in the Katakana for Singapore (シンガポール). I’ve written about this extender in another article that will explain it for you.

Need help with Katakana? Check out my Katakana Starter Kit with a full explanation of Katakana and a worksheet to download.

As an exercise to use your newly found Katakana powers, why not find the Katakana for the following countries. Good luck!

Try Canada, Cuba, Peru, Egypt, France and of course we better not forget Australia ^_^

Once you have done that without peeking, take a look at this comprehensive country name listing from Jim Breen.

• Japan Signs: Virgin Bourbon
• Japan Signs: Ameyoko Fruit Stall
• Romaji Is Evil
• Learn Katakana: The Starter Kit
• Learn Katakana: Japanese Computer Terms

A potentially confusing part of Japanese for some beginners can be their first encounter with katakana.

You may start asking yourself if there were perhaps secret rows of hiragana you missed in your studies? Or maybe you didn’t even know there was another writing set between hiragana and kanji?

If so, please read on and hopefully this little article can help clear things up.

What Is Katakana?

Katakana (カタカナ) is one of three Japanese writing systems, the other two being hiragana and kanji. As a child, hiragana is normally learnt first, followed by katakana and then kanji.

Hiragana and katakana differ from kanji in that they denote syllables rather than kanji, which substitutes for entire words.

Katakana is used for loan or foreign words, which includes many technical and scientific terms. Loan words are words that are “loaned” from other languages. In the example below the word “television” has obviously only come in to use in the last 50-60 years and was a Western invention.

So television, being a loan word, is written in katakana as テレビジョン (te テ re レ bi ビ jo ジョ n ン) but is mostly shortened to テレビ (te-re-bi). You will never see it written in hiragana or kanji.

If you ever stop by any electronics store you’ll see almost everything marked with katakana as the product names are mostly loan words.

Country names, foreign places (as can be seen in the travel ad above) and personal names can regularly be found in katakana. A common example of that is the USA, which is written as アメリカ (Amerika) even though it does actually have a kanji – 米.

Katakana is also widely used in advertising on signs and billboards as the shapes of the syllabary seem to lend themselves to that type of use.

When Will I Use Katakana?

I was once told that I need not bother learning katakana because I would never use it.

I have also read this type of rhetoric around the interwebs and it is blatantly false. One quick trip to anywhere in Japan will show you how much katakana you will see in your day to day travels.

The image above is reminiscent of what you’ll see on many supermarket shelfs and, in the case of this photo, chemists.

Rows upon rows of laundry detergent all written in katakana – imagine the horror when your partner asks you to grab brand X and you come home with brand Y because you can’t read katakana – oh the shame!

It’s really not worth the pain is it, folks? ^_^

Possibly the most important short term reason for Japanese students to learn katakana is that all the on’yomi (Chinese-based kanji readings) are written exclusively in katakana.

So when you move on to mastering kanji, you’re going to hit a very sudden brick wall if you can’t figure out the simple katakana readings to learn them properly.

Get Started

To get you started on your way to becoming a katakana superstar, I have a basic Katakana Starter Kit Worksheet download available below. There are two worksheets included in the pdf download – one featuring just the katakana and another one with the stroke order and romaji for each syllable.

The second part of this series will move on to the extra katakana with dakuten and handakuten, which are the little extra strokes on each katakana (and hiragana) to change the sound of the katakana from ka to ga or ho to po, for example.

Download Worksheet

• Download Katakana Starter Worksheet »

Any questions – please leave a comment.

• Japanese Terms Explained for Beginners
• Hiragana: The T Line
• Hiragana: The N Line
• Romaji Is Evil
• Learn Kanji: The Kanji Starter Kit