Congratulations! It seems like you’re about to start your journey to learn Japanese seriously – or you try to find out what your cool looking Japanese Tattoo really means – either way, learning to write Japanese comes with a lot of benefits. Besides the obvious benefits like being able to communicate while travelling, or understand your favorite anime without subtitles, studies suggest that language learning can even prevent neurocognitive diseases like Alzheimer’s or Dementia.
Learning how to write Japanese is also boosting your ability to memorize new characters much faster since stronger connections are formed in your brain compared to just memorizing a character through boring theory.
You will see that it’s actually pretty fun, almost meditative, writing the three different writing systems which are used in Japanese. It’s no coincidence that a lot of people find pleasure in calligraphy and pursue to perfect their handwriting. It does calm your mind while – with some training at least – also being aesthetically pleasing. If you hear about Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji for the first time, we got you covered in our easy-to-understand, basic explanation of Japanese.
We provide you with so-called stroke order charts, so feel free to print them and start becoming a calligraphy master right away!
Hiragana is unarguably the entry ticket to communicating in Japanese. It will come in handy at least when you’re travelling through Japan, and it’s a prerequisite to be able to write Hiragana if you someday want to live in Japan. Just think about filling in forms in the town hall or inviting your neighbors to a party…
Just follow the gray outlines of the character with a pen of your choice. You can get a brush pen (筆ペン) for the real calligraphy feeling. The numbered, solid arrows indicate the start and direction of a stroke, while dotted arrows give you orientation when there are more complex movements or changes of direction.
There is a stroke order for every character! For the start, just follow the numbers and memorize the first few Hiragana. Later we take a look at the rules for more complex Kanji with up to 25 strokes.
Feel free to use the charts and share them in a non-commercial way with everyone who wants to learn how to write Japanese.
おつかれさまです
Before we move on to the next level, let’s test your progress. I bet by now you’ll be able to identify and read quite a bit already!
How about とうほく?
Or おんせん?
What about もち and すし?
Tohoku (東北 – the northeast region of Japans main island) is famous for its Onsen (温泉 – natural hot springs) and its tasty rice, of which even yummier mochi (餅) and sushi (寿司) is made. With us, you can combine your Japanese studies and delve into authentic Japanese culture and traditions! We provide you with tailored trips, hands-on-experiences and arrange your stay at the best language schools in Japan! Not just eat tasty mochi, but learn how to make it and chat with the locals, further improving your language skills! An experience you won’t find in the major cities like Tokyo or Kyoto.
With Katakana, we reach the next stage on our quest on how to write Japanese. Everything gets a little bit trickier now. Some characters are very hard to tell apart, some almost look identical! For this we provide you with a tip that should help you not to get confused by the infamous Katakana characters of ‘shi’, ‘n’, ‘so’ and ‘tsu’.
For your convenience, we included the corresponding Hiragana in the bottom right corner of each square. That way there’s no need to change the charts when learning both, Hiragana and Katakana at the same time!
Finally, on your way to learning how to write Japanese, there are Kanji. Some are as easy as one or two strokes, but some are really crazy, consisting of 25 plus strokes. We put together some Kanji that you will encounter quite often in everyday life. Maybe you notice that some patterns are repeating. Let’s take the Kanji for Male. It actually consists of the two Kanji for ‘rice paddy’ and ‘power’. Put them together, and it’s quite easy to write ‘male’ in Japanese. Once you know those easier stroke orders, you recognize that there are certain patterns that allow you to write even unknown Kanji in the correct stroke order. We don’t want to go too in depth here, but in general you write from top to bottom, if there is a square shape (like ‘rice paddy’), you start with the left stroke, continue with one stroke as the outline of the square and write everything inside before “closing” the square. When a Kanji consists of several compounds (so-called “radicals“) you finish them from left to right.
Since Kanji originated from China, there is a Chinese reading (written in Katakana) in addition to the Japanese reading (written in Hiragana). Take a look at the Kanji for gold or money: It can be read as ‘Kane’ or as ‘Kin’, depending on the context and use of the Kanji. For example: If you’re talking about money in general it is called ‘O-Kane’ (お金 the “O” making it polite), but gold as a color is called ‘kiniro’ (金色).
As a rule of thumb: If there is a single Kanji usually the Japanese reading applies, if a word consists of two or more Kanji, most likely the Chinese reading is correct.
That’s our brief introduction on how to write Japanese. There will be further posts on the matter in the future. In the meantime, you can learn more Japanese with Tae Kim’s guide. Just like us, he’s not a big fan of learning Japanese through the usual textbooks, but rather naturally through immersion as much as possible.
Will you give it a try? Or are you already a calligraphy master and know how to write Japanese? Do you think writing skills are still essential? Let us know in the comments!
