Japanese is written with two syllable alphabets of 46 characters each. Hiragana carries the grammar and native words; katakana spells borrowed ones. They are the first thing to learn and the only part of the language worth memorising by brute force — everything after them gets easier. Below there is a drill that reads each character aloud as you get it right, and a chart made to be printed.
Type the romaji. Nothing to press: the moment what you have typed can only be the right answer, it moves on and says the character out loud.
Writing system
Variants
Click any character to hear it. Printing gives you whichever script is showing, all three tables, on one landscape page — switch to the other and print again for the second sheet.
The 46 basic sounds, the gojūon. Read down the columns: a-i-u-e-o, then those five vowels again with each consonant in front. Learn these first — the other two tables are built out of them.
The same shapes with a voicing mark added. Two small strokes (dakuten) turn か into が, さ into ざ, た into だ and は into ば; a small circle (handakuten) turns は into ぱ. No new shapes to learn.
A small ゃ ゅ ょ written after an i-row kana. The two characters are one syllable: きゃ is kya, not ki-ya. A full-size や would make it two.
ぢ and づ are faded because they are rare: they sound identical to じ and ず, and turn up mostly where a compound voices a syllable, as in 続く (つづく).
Almost everyone loses time on the same handful of look-alikes. Each of these has one detail that settles it.
Both have three strokes. シ is written left to right and its long stroke sweeps up from the bottom left; ツ is written top to bottom and its long stroke comes down. The two short marks follow the same logic: side by side on シ, stacked across the top on ツ.
The same rule in two strokes. ン sweeps up from the lower left, like シ. ソ comes down from the top, like ツ. Learn the シ/ツ pair and this one is free.
ク has a sharp corner at the top and a short first stroke. ワ is wider, rounded at the corner, and its opening is broad. ケ (ke) joins this group: it is ク with a stroke through the top.
Identical except for the ending: ぬ finishes with a loop, め does not. If it has a tail tied in a knot, it is ぬ.
Same left side, different finish. ね ends in a closed loop, れ in an open hook that flicks outward. わ (wa) is the third of the set: same left side, no loop and no hook, just a round turn.
き has two crossbars, さ has one. The lower curve is the same on both.
Hiragana first, on its own, before touching katakana. The two look alike enough that learning them together blurs both, and hiragana is what you will actually read first.
Work in rows rather than all 46 at once: あいうえお, then かきくけこ, and so on. Run the drill on what you have covered so far, not on the whole set — being shown characters you have never seen teaches nothing and just makes the score look bad.
You know a character when the sound arrives before you have thought about it. Until then the romaji under it in the chart is a crutch that quietly slows you down, so drop it as soon as a row starts to stick. Reading anything real, even a menu or a song title, will do more for the last stubborn few than another pass through the table.
Once the characters are automatic, the useful next step is reading words rather than single sounds — which is where an app that keeps track of what you have met is worth more than a chart.