Hiragana
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There are 46 differnt hiragana characters. Hiragana are used to write native Japanese words. Once you learn all 46, it's easy, since each character has a sound associated with it. This sound never changes, no matter what the word is. Hiragana letters are very curvey.
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Katakana
There are also 46 different katakana characters. Katakana is used to write foreign words. For example, taxi is written as ta-ku-shi in katakana since the word taxi is borrowed from the English language. Katakana letters are very straight & blocky.

Kanji
Here's where the real fun begins!! There are 1,945 basic kanji characters recommended for daily use!! But, of course, there are around 4,000 different kanji characters all told! Kanji characters are Chinese characters. Each one has to be memorized. For one character, there is both the Japanese way to pronounce it, plus possibly more than one Chinese pronunciation!
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