January 12th Summary

For the first session of MangaCon, we covered some basic rules for reading Japanese. They are;

-Written Japanese doesn't have spaces between the words.
-There isn't any punctuation except for the "maru" (circle).
-Japanese has a certain order that has to be followed.

Another rule to remember:
-Japanese is a combination of hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

We went through the descriptions of the different writing systems;
-Hiragana is the first system that's learned. It is used for native Japanese words.
-Katakana is the second system that's learned. It is used for foreign words and emphasis. It's seen on alot of signs.
-Kanji is the final system. It's the pictographs, and the hardest system to learn.

We started learning how to write all three systems.  For hiragana: vowels and "k".  Katakana is the same.  Kanji is below. 

If you want to learn a little more on structure and sentence building, these two sites will help.

Beginners' Japanese Journal
Power Japanese

Hito, nin, jin: person

Sun: hi, -bi, nichi, ni

Day: ka

Numbers:

Ichi: 1

Ni: 2

San: 3

Shi/Yon: 4

Go: 5

Roku: 6

Shichi/Nana: 7

Hachi: 8

Kyuu: 9

Juu: 10