Although you see some English signs in town, majority of things are written in Japanese.
There are 3 ways of writing
Hiragana（ひらがな）
Katakana（カタカナ）
Kanji（漢字）
You don’t need to know everything, but if you just know what they look like or have some ideas about them, it might be easier.
All those 3 sets of writing can appear in one sentence. When you look at Japanese writing, complicated letters are usually Kanji. For example
東京にはショッピング・モールがたくさんあります。（There are many shopping malls in Tokyo）
In this sentence, 東京 (Tokyo) is in Kanji and ショッピング・モール(Shopping Mall) is in Katakana and all other are in Hiragana.
Initially, Japanese people learned Chinese characters to write. Gradually, they used those Chinese characters to phonetically write Japanese. It is said that in early 9C century, phonetic Chinese characters were simplified to “kana” and now we use 3 sets of writing.
Kana can be divided into 2: Hiragana and Katakana. They are both phonetic, meaning we write as it is pronounced. Today, Katakana is used to write words coming from foreign words and Hiragana are used for everything else. For example, things coming from abroad/foreign words such as computer is written in Katakana as コンピューター。Your name can be also written in Katakana.
For Japanese things, we can write in Hiragana like Ohayo（おはよう）
They are both phonetic, so once you learn those letters, you can just read it and pronounce it. Kana are simplified version so it looks simple. Katakana is more straight and Hiragana is more cursive.
For example, the sound ka in Katakana is カ and Hiragana is か
Kanji literally meaning letters from Han (Dynasty of China) They are pictograph and each letter has meaning. Kanji is convenient because you can see the letter and get the meaning immediately. For most of the things, we have Kanji. For example, Japanese people’s names usually have Kanji such as Suzuki 鈴木、Sato 佐藤、Watanabe 渡辺 and so on.
From Tomorrow, I will explain each letters.
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