These are notes on Japanese. Most of the information is in any textbook; some other is me trying to make sense of it. I put a lot of effort in the organization of the material, so I made it public in case someone finds it useful, but I am not a Japanese language teacher; I am just a student. Also, these pages will always be a work in progress: sometimes I add things, sometimes I fix things, sometimes I remove things.

In 1st grade, Japanese children are introduced to the Japanese writing system, composed mainly of two syllabaries, i.e., the kanas, and the imported Chinese characters, i.e., the kanjis. After a high-level description of the Japanese writing systems, we go over the kanas. Honestly, there is not much to them, but don’t expect to master them in a few days.

Once we are acquainted with the kanas we go into radicals. Radicals are one of the main components of every kanji because every kanji has at least one radical. We tackle all the radicals of the 80 1st-grade kanjis, and then the 80 kanjis themselves, which represent basic concepts of the world of a child, e.g., dog, man, eye, insect, flower, sky, river, etc.