Hiragana

Textbook
Characters
Exercises
Handouts
Quizzes
Worksheets

Textbook

Material on this page refers to lessons from the following textbook:

Buy at Amazon Jorden, Eleanor Harz. Japanese: The Spoken Language, Part 1. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780300038347.

Characters

Follow the links from the column headings to study that whole column, or click on each individual character. The "n-" and "w-" columns are included in "r", and the "y-" column is included in "m".

Each character page contains an image of the character, a short movie of how it is written, and examples of words using the character. The movies were created by Saeko Komori, Chubu University. You will hear the following words while watching the movies: nagareru (flow), haneru (hook), and tomeru (stop). Pay attention to these three points when practicing writing. Please see the JP Net Kanji Project for more details.

n w r y m h n t s k     
ん わ ら や ま は な た さ か あ a
    り   み ひ に ち し き い i
    る ゆ む ふ ぬ つ す く う u
    れ   め へ ね て せ け え e
  を ろ よ も ほ の と そ こ お o

Exercises

The following exercises provide a short introduction to the character sounds and reading practice.

Handouts

These pages contain further information about word and sentence construction in hiragana.

Quizzes

Test your knowledge of characters and vocabulary.

Note: JavaScript must be enabled to use these resources.

Worksheets

For further study, worksheets are available to print out.

Topics PDF
"a" - "ko" (あ - こ) (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)
"sa" - "to" (さ - と) (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)
"na" - "ho" (な - ほ) (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)
"ma" - "yo" (ま - よ) (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)
"ra" - "n" (ら - ん) (This resource may not render correctly in a screen reader.PDF)
Voiced (が - ) (PDF)
C + y + V (き ゃ - ) (PDF)
Words & Phrases (PDF)