こんにちにゃあ！Welcome to Kiki+Koko: Let’s NihonGO!! Online! With supplies in hand and a smile on your face, you may find yourself trekking off into the great unknown, each step forward a new one full of surprises. In unfamiliar surroundings, it can be an adventure unlike any other. 木漏れ日, komorebi, sunlight filtering through the trees above and the forest floor twisting and turning with brooks flowing through as gentle obstacles. For some, they may not have even realised that they’ve been hiking uphill all of this time, but for others, the forest may feel confusing and treacherous with too many hills and too dense of brush to weave through. No matter the journey, a positive attitude is what can change difficulties into simply challenges. And, any endeavour and journey in life is almost certainly going to pose challenges. But, when it comes to learning, it’s something everyone has to accept may not go as smoothly as they wish. And, they may get bogged down with the little difficulties rather than tackling these challenges and enjoying the journey. We know those of you who have been learning since 「あいうえお」have most likely progressed a long way, but we never want to make you feel like you’re ever left behind or that the journey is going to quickly. That’s why every so often we like to give you a bit of a map for part of your journey. We’re Kiki and Koko, your guides to Japanese language and culture, and this metaphorical maps we’ve given you are opportunities to have some focused practice. It can be a little simpler to find passages to practise reading, albeit a bit difficult, but it can be a bit more challenging to find practice which focuses on exactly how far you’ve learnt how to read in Japanese. That’s why we’re providing a hopefully relaxing yet useful activity for you, today, helping you to survive and thrive!

Before partaking in today’s practice, you’ll probably want to have a look at the previous lessons containing the characters from the 五十音順, gojuuonjun, to the 濁点、dakuten, to 半濁点, handakuten. But, maybe you’ve only just stumbled upon these lessons and you’re not quite there yet. In which case, no worries! You can just take this as an opportunity to go through and revise any of the previous hiragana you don’t know, yet. And, maybe you’re very early into learning Japanese and you’re not even sure what a ‘hiragana’ is, and again, no need to fret, we’ll be right there to explain it to you in the concise article: How Do You Write in Japanese? | Japanese Writing System Demystified where we give you the very basics of how Japanese is written so you’ll have a general idea of what you’ll need to know in future. But, in the meantime, today’s practice is meant for the hiragana taught thusfar, so those who feel confident they’ve made it this far can take a moment to have a look at the previous lessons.

Note: If the very latest lessons haven’t shown up in the Reading and Writing sections, no worries, as you can find the very latest through these search options on the site:

🔊Let’s Read!! w/ QUIZBO™

🔊[QUIZ] Do You Know?

✍Let’s Write HIRAGANA!!

And, this brings us to today’s activity! We’ll be challenging you, in order to properly practise your reading, writing, and even a bit of vocabulary along the way! But, how can we possibly combine all three of these skills into one activity? Well, with today’s flashcards, we’ll be providing sort of an open-ended way of practice that allows you to either write down your answers, say them in your head, and/or say them aloud. This open-ended style is meant for those who don’t want the stabilisers of multiple choice to weigh down their answers and promote reading with a sense of actually taking the words from your mind. However, this time, we’re going to also try to build this to allow you to read an entire sentence! That’s right! You’ll actually be reading sentences whilst you pick up some fun vocabulary or practise previous vocabulary.

Again, this is a time where we recommend you practise reading AND writing! You can use these hidden answer digital flashcards to practise reading the words aloud, but you can also take out a notebook and practise hiragana stroke order. And, hey, you can even practise composing your own sentences with the vocabulary and structure presented. If you’re stuck on how to create sentences, just go to the Grammar page in the Essentials section for guidance, and if you’d like the very latest on grammar, you can always go to the 文法｜Grammar! category on the sidebar.

In this mini-activity, you basically have digital flashcards. By clicking on each of them, you’ll reveal a the reading of the word version along with the kanji 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. With each new word you read, you can apply grammar in order to read and translate an entire sentence!!

We’ll try to keep things simple and maybe even use some vocabulary you may have already learned in order to make things still a challenge but at least a bit more within reach so that it’s not impossible. But, hopefully it’s not so easy that it isn’t proper practise– And, if it is, then be sure to challenge yourself with something else on top of this like composition to keep your mind and Japanese skills progressing further!

Ready? Let’s NihonGO!!

As a reminder, these are just a few vocabulary words. Knowing hiragana from あ through ぽ opens up SO MANY Japanese word to you! (Only excluding the last few characters and some extra blends) We hope you get the most that you can out of these digital flashcards~!

Sentence ＃1:

わたし　は　にほんご　を　まなぶ　がくせい　です。　

Let’s have a read of the whole sentence, altogether!

Sentence ＃2:

にっぽん　に　たび　したいです。

Let’s have a read of the whole sentence, altogether!

Sentence ＃3:

わたしの　せんせいは　たんごを　おしえます。　

Let’s have a read of the whole sentence, altogether!

Now that you’ve hopefully gotten a bit of practice looking at each vocabulary word one by one, let’s try a few sentences all at once! Be sure not to cheat, though!! Take out a notebook or a reused piece of paper (or just something to write on) and have a go of each of the words, writing how you think each character is pronounced one at a time, romanising it. 

Afterwards, you can take a bit going through some of the vocabulary words that are linked if you’d like to know more about them!

Sentence ＃4:

にほんご　の　ことば　の　はつおん　は　えいご　と　違います。

Let’s have a read of the whole sentence, altogether!

Sentence ＃5:

ひらがな　を　よむ　の　は　たのしい　です。　

Let’s have a read of the whole sentence, altogether!

Just one more sentence! It’s a little longer than the others, but we know you can do it!! Just give it your best go of it!

Sentence ＃6:

まいにち、かみ　の　うえ　に　ぼーるぺん　で　もじ　を　きれい　に　かきます。

Let’s have a read of the whole sentence, altogether!

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

Wow wow! You should be quite chuffed! You just read through an entire paragraph’s worth of sentences in Japanese!! See how efficiently you can learn vocabulary whilst 勉強しています? Sometimes it takes working towards a larger mini-goal in order to stay motivated throughout reading many words at once. As a beginner, it can be a lot if you were to look at several Japanese sentences written in their original kanji, and it could even scare you off. But, once you start to see each sentence as something built from words and sounds and simply take it one step at a time, it seems much more manageable. Of course, kanji is quite the undertaking, but as a beginner, you can at least take pride in being able to understand and maybe even relay some information in Japanese! Learning hiragana may feel like a small step, but in the scheme of things, it’s a giant leap into future fluency! Be sure to focus on the steps and strides you’ve made and try your best to apply the skills you’ve been practising in order to make them even that much more natural to use on a daily basis. Hopefully today’s practise not only gives you a springboard for reading, conjugation, writing practice, composition, and more, but also gives you a bolstering of confidence that you’re really building towards something greater with each of these skills. Little by little, character by character, and word by word, we know with a little patience and some time, you’ll be able to reach your goals!

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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Speaking of which, we want to continue to ensure your steps to success in your Japanese language learning goals, whether you want to just learn a bit for fun or become fluent. You can ensure the continuation of the creation of new and even better content by leaving a TIP in the TIP♡JAR to keep it going. But! You can also support the content when you purchase any artwork from ieindigoeast.redbubble.com (making sure to use our special redbubble link). But, if there’s something that isn’t from our theme, you can always drop Indigo East a ‘Bubblemail’ if you want to specify that you would like it to go towards this content. Or for long or even short term contributions, 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. We just want to do our best to fulfil our mission.

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.

Stay Safe!!
♡Kiki+Koko

     
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