こんにちにゃあぁっ～！Welcome, friends! This is Kiki+Koko: Let’s NihonGO!! Online in blog form. As you may have guessed, we’re Kiki and Koko, your guides to Japanese language and culture. We’re here to give you the vital information you need to become proficient in Japanese language, or just have fun dabbling in a new language! Impress your mates with your new skills, or just be happy in your own accomplishment of being able to communicate in Japanese through writing. But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves!

We’re over halfway through 五十音順, gojuuon jun, and that’s quite the accomplishment. And… we should let you know that when it comes to hiragana, 五十音順, gojuuon jun, isn’t necessarily the end-all—it’s not every single hiragana you need to learn—but at the same time, it kind of … is? Well, not completely—It’s complicated… but not really. You’ll learn later on that there are some sounds that are missing that you might already have seen in some vocabulary words, but even then, you’ll have already learnt the character, and you’ll just have to add a special mark to it to change the sound. We’re not going to delve into it right here and now, yet, but we figured it would be something interesting to mention because when you learn 【はひふへほ】since you’re basically learning 15 characters at once as these are the base to 10 other characters as well. So, that’s something definitely encouraging about this lesson! It’s preparing you for so much more.

But, maybe, you’re not completely on-board with this whole stroke order thing, wondering if the work is worth it… Well, luckily enough, we covered the answer to that is included in this article we wrote! 🤔Do I REALLY need to learn Stroke Order? | 6 Reasons Why {or Why not?} | What is Stroke Order?  Without giving spoilers, some may not like the answer, but we obviously make these lessons for a good reason, and sometimes reasons are great motivators to continue doing your best or to begin on a learning journey on a certain path.

Before we dive into writing, maybe you’re not even sure what hiragana even is, especially if you’ve just randomly stumbled across this page. And, we have you covered:  How Do You Write in Japanese? | Japanese Writing System Demystified will answer all of your important questions—except maybe the meaning of life or how Tigress found the panda village so easily if it was supposedly impossible to find.

一緒に書きましょうか。Shall we write together? 頑張りましょうね！Let’s do our best!

If it’s your first time here, we would like to introduce you to our good friend, QUIZBO™, the quizzing computer who also helps us by showing how each hiragana is written. And, what better way to show this than the most classic and advanced methodology known to mankind: arrows.

It’s simple in theory, but it’s very effective to help you suss out these characters. And, no worries, you don’t just have computers to assist, we’ll give you helpful hints along the way.

How to use stroke order

Before we properly begin, we figured it would be best to give you a quick overview on how to read these diagrams. For each character, there’s mostly 3-4 strokes that are written in a specific order. Each number signifies which stroke should come first. Start where the circled number begins and write the stroke in the direction in which the arrow is pointing. If you want to see what each step looks like and what yours should look like at that stage, then take a look at the squares on the right. They squares are ordered up to down and right to left in Japanese order. And, that’s the whole of it!

Take out your pencils and paper, your tablets and styli, Let’s write hiragana! 

Let’s NihonGO!!

Kiki+Koko’s Helpful Hints:
If you’ve been with us since earlier lessons, you’ll be familiar with the extra little trailing off point you’ll see on a lot of characters that you may see sometimes and others not as much. 【は】can be seen in a lot of fonts with and without the extra  serif that happens when you trail from stroke 1 to stroke 2, but a lot of handwriting and many people use a simple downward motion and keep it there. So, we suppose if you’ve been keeping the trailing serif off this entire time or using it on previous ones, then just stay consistent in your handwriting, but take a mental note when reading other fonts or handwriting. 

Kiki+Koko’s Helpful Hints:
Well, this doesn’t really need as much explanation as others. We’re just here to mention that 【ひ】is just one stroke, so just make sure to keep the angles sharp on this one save for the teardrop area. Also, this reminds us a bit of a horseshoe… Or an upside down Ω, omega. That probably doesn’t help, but definitely a lucky one-stroke hiragana. 

Kiki+Koko’s Helpful Hints:
This is a character that’s oddly written a couple of different ways, even when we write it, we end up connecting stroke 1 and stroke 2. In that case it would look a lot more reminiscent of the font version:【ふ】. Stroke 4 also sometimes trails off from switching from stroke 3 to stroke 4. Stroke 1 doesn’t always trail off in every handwriting, as well. We just recommend staying consistent and also knowing these things for reading others’ handwriting.

Kiki+Koko’s Helpful Hints:
Another one-stroke wonder! This always reminds us of Mt. Fuji. It’s not really much of a hint, but an observation. Two one-stroke hiragana in one lesson, definitely lucky stuff.

Kiki+Koko’s Helpful Hints:
Nope, you’re not seeing double, 【ほ】is literally 【は】with a hat, or an extra line on the top. This is definitely something important to look at as not to get them mixed up. Writing them definitely helps you mentally suss these sorts of differences out. One stroke here or there can change the entire pronunciation, but they’re shaped differently enough to where you’ll most likely notice the differentiation. Oh! And this also has the same optional trailing serif.  

Wowee, boyos, there we are!「はひふへほ」!! This might oddly be one of the most efficient lessons of them all due to the future characters that will use these as their base as well as the two one-stroke characters, then two other characters that are just one stroke different! Once you start to learn more hiragana, and eventually 漢字, kanji, you’ll start seeing more similarities and patterns that will make these characters seem a lot less daunting. Sure, everything takes practise, revising, studying, and effort, but you’ll definitely see as you go on how the momentum of learning and the confidence of having a grasp on some characters will really help you continue to learn even more.

And, hey, if there’s anything that helps even more than just repeating, it’s applying! We’ll have some practise vocabulary available to you to use to write and practise these characters. And, also, feel free to go back and practise the previous characters. You can go back and test your knowledge with QUIZBO™ or try to write some of the previous characters to see how far you’ve gotten, or to practise your handwriting. But, there you have it, you’re five characters closer to knowing hiragana, and basically fifteen character closer if you count our spoiler from earlier! You’re on your way, kiddo!!

Read, Write, and Revise with Kiki+Koko: Let’s NihonGO!!:
                        

We hope this was/will be helpful for you on your Japanese learning journey!
We really appreciate that you’ve chosen to learn with us—We really mean it! Your support means a lot even in the form of simply viewing our content regularly. 感謝しております！Feel free to share it with a friend to spread the knowledge!

Until next time, thank you for visiting! We can’t wait to see you again!
♡Kiki+Koko