Japanese Kana Guides

Welcome to the KanaFluency guide library — a set of hand-written articles that accompany the drills and reference charts in the rest of the app. If the drills are the gym, the guides are the coach explaining why you're doing each exercise.

Every guide is written for self-studying beginners who want more than a memorised character grid. We cover the historical origin of the scripts, the practical rules that govern everyday Japanese writing, the pitfalls that derail learners around the one-week mark, and the strategies that actually move characters into long-term memory. No fluff, no "hiragana is beautiful" filler — just the stuff you need to read your first real sentence.

Pick a guide below and start reading. When you're ready to practise, head to the guided learning path or jump straight into any practice mode.

Start here

• The Complete Hiragana Guide

  12 min read

  Every hiragana character explained — history, structure, dakuten, yōon, and the mnemonics that actually stick. Start here if you've never touched Japanese writing before.

• The Complete Katakana Guide

  11 min read

  Hiragana's angular counterpart, used for loanwords, onomatopoeia, and emphasis. Learn the full set plus the loanword-reading rules that trip everyone up.

• Does Japanese Have an Alphabet?

  8 min read

  A quick tour of hiragana, katakana, kanji, and rōmaji — what each is for, why there are three native scripts, and what to learn first.

• How to Learn Kana — A 4-Week Study Plan

  9 min read

  A realistic, burnout-proof schedule that takes you from zero to confident reading in four weeks. Rooted in spaced repetition, not willpower.

• Hiragana vs Katakana — When to Use Which

  7 min read

  The two scripts cover the same sounds, but Japanese speakers choose between them based on rules you can learn in ten minutes. Twenty-plus example sentences.

How these guides fit together

If you've never seen Japanese writing before, read the alphabet overview first. It takes ten minutes and it'll save you hours of confusion about what hiragana, katakana, and kanji actually are.

Then pick one of the two script guides — hiragana is the conventional starting point, but if you're learning Japanese specifically to read tech, science, or brand names, katakana is also a defensible first target. Don't try to learn both at once; the characters will blur together and you'll feel like you're getting nowhere.

When you have a working recognition of one script, the four-week study plan tells you what to do each day from "know nothing" to "read basic sentences." It's the guide we wish we'd had.

Everything is free

The guides are supported by light display advertising (never on the drill screens themselves — see our privacy policy for specifics). If you'd rather not see ads, the site works fully with an ad blocker enabled.