Kana and typing

The first time you look at a page of Japanese, it’s a wall. Three writing systems, all mixed together. There’s hiragana, the round one that does most of the grammar. Katakana, the angular one for foreign words and emphasis. And kanji, the Chinese characters. Kanji gets its own chapter. Today it’s just the first two, and here’s the good news: kana is the easiest part of the whole language. About 46 basic characters each, a few marks on top, and most people have them down within a week.

Getting kana down

Start with hiragana, since it’s on every line of Japanese you’ll ever read. Then katakana. Ten minutes a few times a day beats one miserable two-hour session. And when I say “down,” I mean you can read them. Slowly is fine. Once you can sound them out, switch your vocab flashcards to kana, and from then on every card and every line you read drills them for you. You won’t need to study them on their own after that.

Katakana will stay slower for a while because you see it less. Totally normal. I’ve been at this for years and katakana still trips me up sometimes. Menus, games and anything full of loanwords fix it over time. If you want something to drill with, I made a free Kana Trainer for exactly this.

What about romaji?

People ask me if it’s bad to learn words before they know all their kana. I don’t think so. Say you learn that sakana means fish from romaji. Later you see さかな, your brain goes “oh, sakana, I know that one,” and you’ve lost nothing. Lots of people start that way. Just don’t stay there. Once you can read kana, move your flashcards, notes and typing over to it, because leaning on romaji long term makes reading real Japanese slower.

Get a Japanese keyboard on everything

You’ll need to type Japanese to look up words, search YouTube and, one day, text people. Every device already has a free Japanese input method (an IME) built in:

• Windows: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language → Japanese. Switch with Alt + ` or Win + Space.
• Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → add Japanese – Romaji. Switch with Ctrl + Space.
• iPhone / Android: add the Japanese keyboard in settings. You can type romaji on the normal layout or use flick, the 12-key layout where you tap a kana and swipe for the rest of its row.

You type romaji (nihongo), it shows にほんご, Space converts it to 日本語, and Enter confirms. ん sometimes needs nn, and a small っ comes from doubling the next consonant (kitte → きって).

▢ Screenshot neededThe IME converting にほんご → 日本語, with the candidate list openimages/guide/ime-conversion.png

Wondering what Japanese people type with? Mostly romaji, same as you. Recent surveys put it around 94%, with kana input (a layout where every key is a kana) at about 5%. Even on phones, a DOCOMO survey of about 6,000 people found fewer than half of every age group uses flick. So don’t feel like a fake typing romaji on your phone. I do it on my PC and my phone. Flick is fun to learn, though. I went from 8 characters in 20 seconds to 21 in 21 after a bit of practice. And if you want to fall down the kana input rabbit hole, I made a little trainer called JIS Grind.

Do you need to write by hand?

Depends on your goals. With an IME you can read, type, text and work in Japanese without ever handwriting a kanji. I can write kana and maybe 50 kanji from memory, but I can read around 2,600. That gap is normal for immersion learners. Still, if you enjoy it, go for it. My friend DASmallWorlds (N1, studying for the top level of the Kanji Kentei) makes a good case that writing helps you tell look-alikes apart, like 待 and 持. At the very least, write your kana out by hand a couple of times so the shapes stick. Then go install that keyboard.