Whether you are about to start a Japanese degree course and need to learn the kana (the two basic Japanese scripts of hiragana and katakana) in advance, or are simply studying Japanese on your own and need a little help, here’s some helpful free resources that can give you  hand in learning hiragana and katakana.

• Marugoto Plus (A1) – This has a fantastic Basic Training section for learning how to read and write hiragana and katakana. You can hear their pronunciation, see animations for how they are written, and even test yourself.


• Hiragana Memory Hint - Study hiragana the fun way using mnemonic pictures with this fun app from the Japan Foundation Japanese Language Institute Kansai! It includes mnemonic memory hints, quizzes and a hiragana table in which you can listen to how each hiragana is pronounced. It can be downloaded for free from iTunes, Google Play and Amazon.
  
  


• “Everything you ever wanted to know about the GCSE-Level Japanese Course” – Unit 1 – Pages 2-28 are all about how to read and write hiragana  and katakana, and even include in-text links to the relevant tutorials on YouTube that will teach you how to write the kana, including very helpful mnemonics!  This document is part of http://japanese4schools.co.uk , which has a lot of other very useful resources for beginner learners of Japanese.
  
  


• Nihongo ena – Beginner Kana Sites – The Nihongo e na  Web Portal has a large list of carefully selected websites that can help you to learn the kana (hiragana and katakana) from scratch, complete with screenshots and descriptions so you can select the best resources for you
  
  


• Japan Foundation London’s Writing Resource Section – This section of our Japanese language teaching & learning resources page includes printable practise mats to help you learn how to write the kana, hiragana and katakana charts, and even a downloadable free “hand written” Japanese font so you can make your own learning resources!