Absolute Zero

I realize that some people are reading these posts that have no background in Japanese at all and want to learn the language as well, so I decided to post something about starting at absolute zero. Or "How to learn Japanese when you don't know any Japanese."

I have the fortune of taking Japanese classes in college and have already been through the elementary level courses.  In those courses the main focus at the beginning was learning to read and write kana.

Kana refers to the Japanese alphabets of hiragana and katakana.  Hiragana is used for the pronunciation of Japanese words, while Katakana is used for foreign words.

Below is the list of all of the Hiragana and Katakana as well as practice sheets for learning to write them.  These would be best used while studying sentences in Anki.  Just write the sentence out to practice the letters.

You will also want to learn stroke order.  I HIGHLY recommend these sheets.
Hiragana Stroke Order Sheets
Katakana Stroke Order Sheets

HIRAGANA:

The basic 48 hiragana characters.

When a " or o is used next to an hiragana character, the pronunciation changes.

Adding a small YA, YU, or YO also changes the pronunciation.

A small TSU means to lengthen the following consonant.

A ー means to lengthen the previous vowel.

KATAKANA:

The basic 48 katakana characters.

When a " or o is used next to an hiragana character, the pronunciation changes.

Adding a small YA, YU, or YO also changes the pronunciation.

A small TSU means to lengthen the following consonant.

A ー means to lengthen the previous vowel.

JAPANESE WRITING PRACTICE SHEETS: Download (right click and save)

Japanese write verically from top to bottom, right to left.