The Japanese writing characters or symbols as many people refer to come in 3

different forms. These are called Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana respectively.

To start with, if you are new to Japanese and not too familiar with the

different symbols used in the Japanese language, we will explain a little about

Japanese writing symbols, these includes the 3 symbols, scripts or characters as

many would refer to which are the Japanese Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana.

These 3 symbol sets are used in combination for Japanese writing.

The symbols can be written in vertical and horizontal fashion, also known as

Tategaki and Yokogaki.

Each symbol form is unique with special focus on certain grammar areas over the

other symbols. For many, the easiest Japanese symbols to learn is the Katakana

script which compromise a set of 46 symbols in total.

In most cases, the Katakana Japanese symbols is mostly used for foreign names,

places, and other related grammar of foreign words. You can learn more about

Katatana symbols, probably to easiest of the Japanese symbol sets to learn and

master.

We also have Japanese Hiragana, this is another character set of the Japanese

language system, Hiragana is learned much similar to Katakana with the same flow

charts. The writing styles in Hiragana are more curved in nature compared to

Katakana which are have very sharp turns and edges on the symbols.

Japanese Hiragana is a unique symbol and can be written independently on its own

or used in conjunction with Japanese Kanji to form words and phrases. The

Hiragana set of characters are much preferred by many people because of its

smooth edges and unique, appealing appearance on Tattoos.

And lastly but the most important one of all is Japanese Kanji.

This symbol set is actually obtained from the Chinese Kanji Symbols set, many

symbols are modified in some ways and have a unique appearance and

characteristics. The Japanese Kanji symbols is usually not used to create names

of foreign people such as Mike or Lucy, Katakana is mostly used instead. However

that being said, it is still possible to create foreign names with Kanji

characters as well with the correct pronunciation's. Something to remember

though is that all foreign names or words which are translated to Japanese Kanji

are made based solely on the phonetic basis.