Let's Learn Hiragana: First Book of Basic Japanese Writing (Kodansha's Children's Classics)

I like the way this book introduces each hiragana syllable, including a detailed stroke order description, and provides you space to practice. Each set of hiragana is followed by several exercises that help reinforce both the reading and writing - fill in the blank, translate from romaji to hiragana, translate from hiragana to romaji. I'm definitely going to pick up the Let's Learn Katakana book next. I started learning Japanese with "My Japanese Coach" for Nintendo DS, which is a nice introduction to the language for someone who doesn't know any Japanese. You can practice writing characters there, but basically you're writing just the character over and over again, so it gets a little repetitive. I read reviews on this book and decided to try it, and I was learning much faster with this book.

Very, very satisfied. The honest truth? No, you probably don't need this book to learn Hiragana. It's very easy. Find a complete list of Hiragana that tells you the stroke orders and brute-force memorise them. Is it fun? Well, for me, yes, as I find writing Hiragana fun, like creating artwork. But, fun or not, brute-force works fine for both sets of Kana alphabets. It doesn't take nearly as long as you might expect, even for dense learners such as myself.

But, if you want to learn Hiragana quickly, you should probably get this book anyway. They're written BY HAND within the book itself. It's someone's actual handwritten Hiragana being printed into the book. I found this very helpful, but I'm not sure I can really explain why. I've found that others also find this supplements the learning experience. It also includes some very minimal practice quizes; these quizes also incidentally introduce some vocabulary. I have to admit that I didn't use these in the Hiragana volume I'm reviewing here, but I probably should have.

I found having a real book that I can carry around with real paper and pen to be the best way to learn. Getting away from electronics, including the computer, helps many like myself to focus better on the actual material and get it down. If you're like me and find yourself a "lazy learner" - and I know there are many of us out there! - this book's for you. Short, not too expensive, and does what it says, earning 5 stars from me.

This book, although in recent print, is, well, lets face it, OLD.

That sounds like a bad thing because you think that amazing new ways of learning in the 21st century would be far superior. BUT NO! ITS THE ORIGINAL AND THE BEST!

I agree with the positive reviewers. This book is perfect (well the closest too it anyway).
It doesnt treat the reader like a baby, it is the most complete and correct book I have seen (compared a few). Id say this is the only REAL Hiragana book on the market, the rest are too basic and miss out important parts (which you simply wont know exist unless you work though this book).

The only thing this book is missing is imagery for the characters to aid your memory. For that i bought flash cards, it would have been nice if ever character in this book, when first presented had cute little picture, and if some basic cut-out flash cards were included. But thats not enough to take away from 5 stars.

If you are having problems remembering the characters, get the Kana Flash cards (white rabbit) as well as this book. There is another book "Japanese Hiragana for Beginners: First Steps to Mastering the Japanese Writing System" that has pictures, but they arent really helpful cause there are kind of ill-logical. But it has flash cards in the back.

Once you can remember the hiragana (might take a week with flash cards), this book will guide you through some vocab and basic sentence structure, as well as all the combinations of hiragana (contracted sounds, voiced, elongated etc...). From this book i can read and correctly pronounce any word written in hiragana (katakana has some small additions which i have just stared in the corresponding katakana book), obviously my accent isnt perfect, that takes time.

Working through this book I was able to learn all the hiragana symbols in about two weeks. The best thing about the book is the extensive practice exercises. You become quite proficient at converting between hiragana and romaji. In addition to the exercises I made my own flashcards to help speed up memorization. Once I felt I had the symbols from one section memorized I tried to do the exercises. I am very impressed with the usefulness of this book so I purchased "Let's Learn Katakana" and will probably get "Let's Learn Kanji" soon. This book is highly recommended!

As someone who didn't know a thing about Japanese scripts, this book has really helped me grasp the basics. I love the setup: ten characters (or less) at a time, space for rote practice of shape/stroke order, and a worksheet that is short, sweet, and to-the-point -- not to mention "cumulative", so previous symbols don't easily slip away from you. Zooming (reasonably) through the basics with visuals in the first half, the book then introduces diacritics and combining forms in prose (along with more exercises utilizing new and old information). It is an excellent system.

I do wish there were more worksheets/exercises in it. The book's length is perfect if you are reviewing some previous knowledge; however if you are a real beginner, you may want to scan them first for repeated use. Doing the worksheets multiple times has been a huge help for me. I plan to purchase Let's Learn Katakana: Second Book of Basic Japanese Writing because of my great experience with hiragana in this one.