こんにちにゃあ～！Welcome to Kiki+Koko: Let’s NihonGO!! Online!! Brought to you via The Internet, the global interconnection of networks that allows us to be right here on your electronic device! We’re your hosts, your guides, your teachers of Japanese language and culture, Kiki and Koko!

Thank you for following us at @kikikokoNihonGO on Twitter! But, to stay up-to-date on the very latest posts, be sure to subscribe to the Electronic Mailing List of Tomorrow usually at the bottom of the webpage.

Wowee, boios. If you’ve been with us since 「あいうえお」, we have to commend you and congratulate you thoroughly. So many people start with a few characters and might simply let the flame die out. Many times, in university, the first week or two of classes will be the only amount of time that you’re allotted to learn hiragana~! And whilst we do know that there may be many people who can do this, in our experience teaching people to read and write, we find that it’s more than a bit much to expect of someone. Sure, everyone pushes learning faster, but we’re here to allow you to learn at the pace that you’re comfortable with!

Many people become rushed and overwhelmed in said classroom settings. Many people simply give up or become discouraged if they can’t quite grasp it as fast. It broke our hearts seeing so many of our past acquaintances give up on learning with their instructors as the reading competency expected so early on becomes too much. Some people work very well being thrown into scenarios and applying knowledge to learn, and others need a bit more time.

Of course, we’re here to teach you, but let’s say you are planning on attending a physical classroom course. This is the perfect opportunity to get a head start! And, if anything, diversifying your studies by learning with us, as well, can keep your studies feeling fresh. We’ll continue to give you information in ways that may be more easily absorbed in this format. Our philosophy is Japanese language and culture at your own pace. Sometimes life has deadlines, with which we can also assist, but in the end, learning Japanese or any language is a journey. Perhaps your goal is fluency, or maybe your goal is just to learn enough to have a bit of fun or communicate with friends or family. At any rate, your journey depends on your life, and we like to facilitate a relaxed learning environment where you might be more perceptive.

But, now that we’ve waffled on a bit, we want to thank anyone who has been here since lesson one! Since 「あ」, you would have learnt 35 hiragana characters!! That’s amazing! That’s 35 more characters than you knew before, and without that extra step, you wouldn’t have gotten this far. And, maybe this is your first lesson, here; in which case, this is luckily a relaxed first lesson. (Though, we do recommend learning them in order)

Don’t know what words like Meiji mean or just don’t know 年号? Take a look at our podcast and article about this!

In this lesson, we’re sitting back with a brief and shorter lesson; you’ve earned it!! Oddly enough, when we look at the 「Y」column, or row, of the 五十音順, gojuuon jun, there are only 3 characters. (We recommend you click that li’l linky-loo there as reference.) But, there’s no 「Yi」or 「Ye」oddly enough, and whilst there are some Meiji era texts that had a form of 「Yi」or 「Ye」, you really definitely won’t see these anywhere. We love to include obsolete hiragana when it might be useful, but even in this case, any brands that use 「Ye」for fun actually use a different character that we’ll teach you.

And, on top of that, these will come in handy after our initial  五十音順, gojuuon jun, lessons! There are different versions of these that are completely different but similar. But, for now, we’re just focusing on characters that aren’t obsolete and ones that aren’t technically different characters. It’s time to learn how to read!! It’s time to kick back and memorise 「やゆよ」！

Oh! But, if you would like to take a moment, this would be the perfect time to look over these once more before adding new information into your noggin. We’ll just put these here for you:

Thanks for taking a look at those. Whew, we sure have created quite a few lessons, but this lesson is a bit of a relaxation day in comparison. But, we cant’ assume, even if you’ve made it this far, you might not know what hiragana is! In which case, you can take a quick looky-look at this article to see how the Japanese writing system works and pop on back.

Hello, there! QUIZBO™でございます！Let’s read hiragana!  Let’s NihonGO!!

But, without further ado, we’ll need to enlist the help of our computer friend, QUIZBO™くん！(The ™ is silent) This is a portable version, QUIZBO™ Mini, who lives here on the site. He’ll be here to help sound out these hiragana for you. You can click the sound ‘bytes’ as many times as you’d like, QUIZBO™ won’t mind. ( Get it, bytes? … Computer?  …We’ll stick to teaching Japanese. ) Afterwards, you’ll be able to take a quiz with QUIZBO™ to help you review them or test your knowledge! Are you ready!?

Let’s NihonGO!! やゆよ!!

We’re going to show you the character, then you you can click the play button to hear QUIZBO™ sound it out for you. But, as a better visualisation of each sound, we also have the romanised pronunciation of each character so you have something in English to which you can compare it.

In romaji, 「や」 is transliterated as「ya」which sounds like 「yahh」which sounds a little like the Swedish word for yes「ja」or… the first syllable in 「yaaaaaas」

[ This is the empty space where Yi doesn’t exist, but when it IS written or used, it’ll usually be 「い」which can be found here]

 In romaji, 「ゆ」 is transliterated as 「yu」which sounds sort of like the English word  「you」

[ This is the empty space where Ye doesn’t exist, but when it IS written or used, it’ll usually be 「え」which can be found here]

In romaji, 「よ」 is transliterated as 「yo」which sounds like the hip greetings of 90s people:「Yo!」or the still pretty hip call in traditional Japanese kabuki:「Yoo~ooh!」

And, there we are! 「やゆよ」~! A little lighter lesson, but this is a great opportunity to go back and revise/review, or maybe share with friends! We do want to take this time to thank all of the people who visit this site and revise often. We love that something we create can help so many people. Our goal is to get these lessons to as may people as possible! If no one sees it, does it really exist? Well, yes, but it still would be lovely if even more people could join us, here. This would also assist in building a proper community. So many people currently visit, but we would really love if you could share and interact– Interactions would assist us in making better lessons for you and sharing would assist us in perhaps getting enough subscribers and views to create even more and even better content!

Until then, we really do hope that the content we create is enjoyable to any loyal visitors or passers-by~ We’re really proud of you for going the extra way to learning something new and broadening your horizons.

We hope this was/will be helpful for you on your Japanese learning journey!
Until next time, thank you for visiting! And have a wonderful day!

♡Kiki+Koko