The 3 writing systems - Tae Kim's Japanese grammar guide
The Alphabets
Hiragana - The main Japanese phonetic alphabet. It is used mostly for grammatical purposes. It can also be used to show the reading for rare or obsolete kanji or as a substitute altogether. This lesson will go over all the letters in hiragana.
Katakana - An alphabet used generally to distinguish non-native words that does not have any kanji associated with it. This lesson will go over all the letters in katakana.
Kanji - An adoption of the Chinese writing system for Japanese. This lesson describes some general properties of kanji as well as some strategies for learning kanji (correctly).
