Hi, this is Reiko. I proudly introduce to you my great friend, Brent Buckalew. He not only put my Japanese for Anime Lovers at Drake University especially for Mac users, but also made these new wonderful lessons on the Japanese writing system, Hiragana and Katakana. Have you ever wished to understand written Japanese on Anime magazines, just the names of Anime series you love, at least? Or have you ever been at a video store and couldn't find the Anime that you were looking for just because the letters on the videos were written in Japanese? For those people, Brent-kun has come to help! You will be an expert on basic Japanese writing system if you follow Brent-kun's instruction and finish all the lessons on this page. Good luck!

people have visited this site since July 24, 1998.

Hello to all who pass this way. I'm glad to see that these web pages are being put to good use. It's good to know that those hours weren't spent in vain. Like all of you, I've gone through all the JAL lessons and enjoyed them all. The reason I made these lessons was already stated by Reiko and I'll state it again in lesson 1. These pages were made for people that can't get ready access to a free book on hiragana or katakana from a library, but sure can get to a computer lickety-split. These pages are also for people that want to further their knowledge of the Japanese language and beyond. Call these pages a stepping stone, if you will. Well, I've given my two cents worth. Enjoy the lessons and I hope that all of you will be able to stand in a Japanese bookstore or somewhere, and mumble the titles to yourself without looking at the cover.

NOTE: There is homework that can be done as well. I explain more about this at the beginning of Lesson 1 for Hiragana.

ANOTHER NOTE: Mina, a student of these lessons, has gotten involved in translating manga and is starting up a mailing list for people who would like to translate Japanese stories to English. If you're interested in this mailing list, just contact her by email at MinaSephy@aol.com.

ANOTHER ANOTHER NOTE: Gilles Malard, a student of these lessons, has graciously provided this site with a Windows application to learn Hiragana and Katakana. He wrote it himself and it's very impressive. Please download it from here if you'd like a copy. Trust me, it's helped me a lot. LearnKana.exe.

Click here to go to Katakana lessons.

Click here to go to Hiragana lessons.

Brent-kun ni E-mail (Write an e-mail to Brent)

I know that some of you won't have the internet time to actually do these lessons. So, I've zipped up the gifs, wavs, and htmls necessary for ALL JAL lessons. You can download them from here. Here they are. I just ask that you don't post these things on one of your web pages and claim the work is your own. To successfully run these web pages from your computer. Download the files and unzip them. Place ALL the files in one folder. Then, just click on the html of your choice and have at it. The lessons of katakana are the kana#.htm and the hiragana lessons are gana#.htm.
For the HTMLs, click here.
For some of the images, click here.
For the last of the images, click here.
For the very last of the images, click here.
For some of the sounds (WARNING!!! 10 MB), click here.
For the rest of the sounds (WARNING!!! 10 MB), click here.

Last updated November 13, 1998