Learn Japanese Now With These Secrets by Billy Buchanan
Don't be intimidated, it's very possible for you to learn Japanese now. With focus, commitment, and especially enthusiasm, you're setting yourself up for a good beginning. Aside from those traits, it is, of course, important to know the basics. Japanese is written using three different writing systems:

* Kanji
* Hiragana
* Katakana

Chinese characters, called Kanji, have been borrowed and incorporated into the language.

More like Western alphabets, but based on Chinese characters, Katakana and Hiragana are syllabic scripts. Kanji and Hiragana, in combination, are the most used writing systems in modern Japanese. Katakana is used chiefly to depict the sounds of borrowed foreign words, or when there is a need to depict other sounds, like the howl of a wolf.

A running joke is that Asians do things backwards; well, Japanese scripts is written vertically, as opposed to the Western horizo ... Read more »