In Japanese you have 3 distinct groups of letters:
-Hiraganas, which are the simplificated characters which you use for use particles or writing words when you don't know the adequate chinese character (spelt kanji, see below). 46 characters
- Katakanas, which has the same pronunciatings as hiraganas but are used for writing in most cases words from foreign languages (mean non japanese words). 46 characters
- Kanjis, which are the chinese characters brought to Japan in the 9Th cnetury I think. One character means one thing. It might have different readings. Sometimes, if both kanjis are stuck, they are spelt in the chinese spelling (written in katakana). Otherwise, in most cases, an alone standing kanji is spelt in the japanese reading.
Exemple: if you see the character of the wheel alone, like
Kore wa (**) desu. This is a wheel. You will say kuruma. Otherwise, if compelled with other characters, like water, you will take the chinese reading, which is for that one "sha" ---> suisha -> Waterwheel.
http://www.thejapanesepage.com/hiragana.GIFhttp://www.thejapanesepage.com/gif/katakana.gifThe compulsory kanji numbers are up to 1945 in Japan. Otherwise, the ones not included in that list are always given a pronunciation above in "furagana", which are just hiragana.
I gave you above the list of characters, though i strongly recommend you to find other pages with the order of the drawings of the lines, because this will have a strong influence on their shape once you write it fluently. It's the same for both hiraganas & katakanas, and kanjis of course.
If you understand French, I recommend you this website :
http://kanji.free.fr/I hope i've been enough of help ^^
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