こんにちにゃあ！Welcome to Kiki+Koko: Let’s NihonGO!! Online! You find yourself out in nature, travelling through the forest with a map in hand. You’re enjoying the journey along the way, but your true prize is deeper within the woods. You can’t quite make out what’s ahead, but you eagerly press on. After climbing over brush and ducking under branches, you run out of ground and instinctively pull your foot back to safety. It’s a small split in the earth, a small leap, but large enough to trip over. There’s a chance you could slip. But, is the prize worth it? As soon as you regain your resolve, a plank is dropped across the small chasm. You look across to see a hand reaching out to yours, helping you cross over「やゆよ」. You don’t need to be told that it’s your guides to Japanese language and culture, Kiki+Koko, helping you navigate, giving you the essentials you need to survive and thrive.

Ⅰf you’ve been with us since the first lessons, you’ll hopefully remember that we’ve been teaching using the traditional gojuuon order. This means, we didn’t only break them into ten more absorbable lessons, but you’ll be able to learn them in an organised fashion. However, one important aspect of all of this is something simple, but something often overlooked, and that’s practise! Though, it can be difficult to find reading practise for your exact level. Usually, it ends up becoming practise of the entire writing system, including ones outside of the gojuuon set. But, that’s what we’re here for!

The first steps to learning Japanese are the trickiest, and though the vocabulary and writing will naturally become more advances, these beginning stages will help you get the ball rolling, making it oddly easier as you go along. As the concepts become more natural, so will the learning process. We want to make sure to provide you every chance possible to get started on the right foot, or the left, whichever is most comfortable.

But, let’s not overlook those who have learnt all of the previous hiragana! Even at these stages, you’ve learnt so much, and you should take the time to congratulate yourself on such a job well done. In the near future, we’ll definitely have something interesting in store. But, for now, the best thing you can do is make sure to cement these in your mind. And, there’s nothing better to keep the hiragana fresh as vocabulary!

The human brain likes to connect concepts to other concepts. It helps things stay organised, and the more concepts you can relate to anything, the easier it will be to remember. That’s why, when Latin alphabet using kids learn their ABCs, they’ll learn, A for Apple, B for Banana, C for Cat, and so on. It’s not just about making learning a little more interesting with a colouring printout, but it’s connecting concepts before you get ready for bigger and more complex concepts.

And this brings us to the challenge! You can use this activity to practise reading, writing, and a bit of vocabulary along the way. That’s right, practising three skills at once! You’ll be unstoppable!! This will cover the hiragana from 【あ】through 【よ】in the gojuuon order. That way, you can focus on the characters you’re already learning, or have learnt, without bogging yourself down with new characters quite yet. If you don’t quite have the stroke order properly memorised, and you’d like to practise writing, you can open a separate tab with our stroke order lessons. We really recommend you use this as an opportunity for writing, and even if you’re confident in your characters, it can be helpful to make sure your handwriting improves. There’s something very fun and impressive about nice handwriting that is timeless and rewarding.

So, we’ve created a 25 word activity to help you recall your hiragana. (That’s over 25 when not even including the other definitions and the different kanji) In this mini-activity, you basically have digital flashcards. By clicking on each of them, you’ll reveal a kanji version that defines the meaning of the word, and of course, the translation in English. Many words have several homophones, so we’ve just included some common meanings as not to bog your studies down.

In the first portion, we’ll keep it simple and stick to a few words that use only the hiragana: 【あいうえお】and【やゆよ】, but in the latter portion, we’ll make things interesting!! 

Ready? Let’s NihonGO!!

As a reminder, these are just a few vocabulary words. Knowing hiragana from あ through よ opens up a HUGE amount of words to you! Some are less common then others, but are useful and interesting to help you connect some concepts to your writing, and recognising the characters in new configurations. We hope you get the most that you can out of these digital flashcards~!

Whew! That’s some words with a smaller pool of characters, wading in the shallow area of the hot spring, and now it’s time to dive off into the deep end!.. Of the pool– It’s definitely not advised to dive into a hot springs.– And, again, there are SO many words to choose from when it comes to this large of a pool of words. That means, if you can’t memorise these more obscure words, it’s no worries. It’s really just to assist you in your studies in the long run. You’ll simply be able to store them in your pack for when these words come up. But, we’re going to do something a bit different in order to keep this a bit simpler. We’re going to focus on words that start with や、ゆ、or よ. This should make things a bit simpler, but still test your knowledge of the combined characters. No worries! There are so many other opportunities throughout future hiragana practise that will make it easier. But, we’ll be sure to mix them up for a bit of a challenge.

In the meantime, you’re doing a wonderful job!! Keep up the good work as we dive in!

How to pronounce and use 勉強 in this Japanese Word of the Week

And that’s 25 more vocabulary words that you can use whilst 勉強しています!! It’s difficult to find reading materials when you’re just beginning, especially to fit such a specific learning niche. Stumbling over other characters your not sure of might not be very helpful early-on. We always include extra words and information in our other lessons if you’d like to absorb even more information, but this is here just for a very focused practise time. You can get as much or as little as you need out of these flashcards, as well. You can refresh to revise with the vocabulary translations or hiragana reading practice. You can practise writing hiragana. You can even practise creating sentences with your new vocabulary! There’s kanji for people further along, the possibilities are endless!

We hope this is a helpful revision / study tool! But, maybe all of this wasn’t quite clicking if you hadn’t been with us from the very beginning. Feel free to take a look at our Reading and Writing sections to revise / review / study, as it’s essential to learning any language. If you want to make sure your Japanese language survival kit is stocked with the latest tools, you can make sure you stay up to date by subscribing to the Electronic Mailing List of Tomorrow, today, found usually at the bottom of the site page or the sidebar on desktop. You’ll get the latest tools and resources to surviving in Japanese language in straight to your inbox. That’s articles, videos, podcasts, and more.

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(Can’t? No worries! The content is free for everyone! We’re just glad you’re here!! Bring friends if you like~!)

Also, we want to make sure we can continue to offer this and even more content for months and years to come. But, sadly, advertising alone can’t cover the cost of running this site and surviving with food and shelter. If you want to ensure our survival as well as the continuation of the creation of new and even better content, feel free to leave a TIP in the TIP♡JAR to keep it going, or for long term contributions in increments, you can join our Patreon where our gracious host, Indigo East, usually posts behind-the-scenes, sneak-peeks, exclusive content, and more. And, we join in as well! Again, if you’d like to support  our survival and the creation of more content to be made available to as many people as possible, you can also share the content! You can easily share via Twitter and Pinterest where you can retweet and repin respectively without even having to type! Gestures like that go a long way, and we appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us! We hope that you continue with us on this adventure, and we appreciate that you’ve chosen us to assist you on your Japanese learning journey!

♡Kiki+Koko