EASY Guide to Learning Hiragana & Katakana in 2 Hours

The first step for all Japanese learners is to learn Hiragana and Katakana, the 2 alphabets of Japanese. While being proficient in reading Hiragana and Katakana will not immediately allow you to read real Japanese, you will NOT be able to read real Japanese without mastering these 2 alphabets first.

In this blog, Jouzu Juls shares a method to learn Hiragana and Katakana in just two hours! Not only will you develop the ability to intuitively recognize the letters, but you will also never forget them.

Before we start, there's a super important note nobody tells you.

Most teachers are obsessed with making Japanese more difficult for you.

There are courses out there that charge several hundreds of dollars JUST for Hiragana over the course of 16 days, and actively try to INTIMIDATE Japanese learners by telling them about how different Japanese is because it has 2 alphabet systems while "English only has one". Or that Japanese learners have to wrack their brains around remembering "92 random shapes and symbols".

This is not helpful at best; deceptive and harmful at worst. I say this because...

English also has 2 alphabet systems.

What? How is it possible for English to have 2 alphabet systems?

You see in Japanese, the same sound can be written using 2 different symbols. Take for example the sound "a" (ah), you can write it in Hiragana as あ or in Katakana as ア. They look different but are pronounced the same, and have no meaning by themself.

Where is this in English? Very simple. In English, you can write the sound "a (ei)" with 2 different symbols as well: a, and A.

So why do so many teachers try to make Japanese sound so difficult and foreign to English?

Are they trying to intentionally deceive you by making Japanese sound so difficult that the only solution is their miracle course? Well...

Most teachers are simply stupid.

With the first mental block out of the way, we can see how similar Japanese and English are at this first stage. If you've learned English and can easily read both the small letters and capital letters, you definitely can do it for Japanese too.

Here's what you'll need:

• Two free apps called Hiragana Pro and Katakana Pro

• A pen and paper
  

Step 1: Observe the Hiragana chart

First, just take a look at the Hiragana chart, see what they are and what they look like. Observe the roundness of the letters or any other characteristics that stand out to you.

Step 2: Write them out once

Replicate the sheet by writing the consonants and vowels on the edge of a piece of physical paper, the begin filling in Hiragana characters in the right sections. Stroke order is not that big of a deal as, realistically, you will not be writing by hand much (unless you live in Japan. However, it's still a good idea to write in the correct order as suggested by this chart from Tofugu.

You will notice two characters here that don't exist in the chart above, those are ゐ and ゑ. This is another example of a website intentionally making Japanese more difficult as these characters are no longer used in modern Japanese. Do not waste your time with these characters.

Step 3: Use Hiragana Pro app to practice recognition

Next, it's time to start practicing your recognition skills. What we are doing is different to "memorization" as that is very impractical, slow, and headache enducing. Use the Hiragana Pro app to practice recognizing Hiragana characters.

Step 4: Test yourself by filling out a blank Hiragana chart

After you've gone through the app, test yourself by filling out a blank Hiragana chart from memory. Don't worry if you make mistakes - just verify them after you've done filling the whole chart and fix the mistakes.

After doing this once, you want to do it once again immediately after correcting the mistakes. You should notice that most, if not all mistakes will be culled in this second attempt. If there are still any mistakes, it should be the same recurring mistakes- but that's OK.

Keep going until you can reach 100% accuracy just from recalling from memory.

Step 5: Stop for the rest of the day

That's it! The key is to stop using Hiragana for the rest of the day and let your brain slow cook the info. Go reward yourself!

Step 6: Test yourself again on the next day

What's the point if you can only remember the Hiragana for a few hours? To find out whether the info stuck, fill out a blank Hiragana chart from memory again. For those who are able to score 100% accuracy again, congratulations! You've just learned Hiragana in two hours.

For those who are unable to recall with 100% accuracy, repeat from Step 3 again.

Step 7: Repeat from Step 1 for Katakana

The past 2 hours you spent learning Hiragana may have been intense, you may want to let the Hiragana slow cook in your brain a bit more instead of immediately starting Katakana if you're worried the Hiragana will fade out or get mixed in with Katakana. Just restart this process with Katakana whenever you're comfortable!

Note: The method outlined here skips over Dakuten (〝) and Handakuten (゜), as well as the small versions of certain characters like ゃ、ょ、and ゅ. All of these change the pronunciation of letters.

But don't worry, you'll be able to figure those out later since you already know the base characters.

This method has proven effective not just for myself, but many commenters who have watched the video guide as well. Let me know how it goes for you!