How to learn Japanese

Japanese is written in three systems used together: hiragana (for grammar and native words), katakana (for foreign loanwords), and kanji (characters borrowed from Chinese). The two kana are small, phonetic alphabets of 46 basic characters each — you can learn to read each in a few days, and doing so first unlocks everything that follows. Romaji (Japanese written in the Latin alphabet) is a crutch worth dropping early: it slows down real reading and is not how the language is actually written.

The practical rule: spend your first week getting hiragana solid, then katakana, using spaced repetition so the characters stick without daily re-cramming. Everything after this — vocabulary, grammar, kanji — is far easier once you can read the script.

Once you can read kana, learn the most frequent words first — the top couple of thousand words cover the large majority of everyday Japanese, so frequency order beats learning whatever a textbook happens to present. Spaced-repetition flashcards are the most efficient tool here: you retrieve each word just before you would forget it, which builds durable memory for a fraction of the time cramming costs.

Japanese grammar is regular and logical, but it works differently from English: the verb comes last (subject–object–verb), and small particles (は, が, を, に) mark the role each word plays. Learn grammar patterns inside short example sentences rather than as abstract rules, so you absorb how the particle behaves, not just its name.

Kanji is the part most learners fear, but you do not need thousands before you can use the language. Learn kanji alongside the vocabulary that uses them, in frequency order, so each character is attached to words you actually know. Trying to memorise kanji as isolated shapes with long reading lists is the slow, brittle path; learning them as part of real words is the durable one.

A common, sensible sequence: read fluently in kana first, start core vocabulary, then layer in the kanji for those words as you go. The JLPT levels (N5 easiest → N1 hardest) are a ready-made, frequency-banded ladder if you want a structured target.

Flashcards build the knowledge base — words, readings, grammar patterns — but they do not, on their own, make you understand fast speech or hold a conversation. Those are processing and production skills, and they grow only through large amounts of listening and reading at your level, plus actual speaking practice. The honest model is to sequence them: use spaced repetition to make input comprehensible, then let input and conversation turn that knowledge into fluency.