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There are 46 hiragana characters for 46 different sounds. Hiragana are used for expressing "grammatical" elements such as particles, and endings of adjectives and verbs which show tenses, etc. Kanji are used for expressing "meaningful" elements such as nouns and stems of adjectives and verbs.

It is possible to write entire Japanese sentences in hiragana. If an adult forgets certain kanji which are rarely used, he/she may substitute hiragana for them. Since the basic 46 hiragana symbols and some modifications of the suffice for all Japanese sounds, Japanese children start to read and write Japanese all in hiragana before making an attempt to learn some of the two thousand kanji currently used.

がぎぐげご
ga gi gu ge go

ざじずぜぞ
za ji zu ze zo

だじずでど
da ji zu de do

ばびぶべぼ
ba bi bu be bo

ぱぴぷぺぽ
pa pi pu pe po

Wee! *absorbs it*

大野智
おおのさとし
(Ohno Satoshi)

櫻井翔
さくらいしょう
(Sakurai Sho)

相葉雅紀
あいばまさき
(Aiba Masaki)

二宮和也
にのみやかずなり
(Ninomiya Kazunari)

松本潤
まつもとじゅん
(Matsumoto Jun)

aish. kanji is hard. evertime i look at one of the characters i utomatically read it in chinese ._.

It should help to think of Japanese vowel sounds as Spanish vowel sounds (as they are the same), so when you see romanji, whatever you see, you say...that's what Hamasaki sensei said when I was learning with him. So any Hispanics out there, or any people trying to learn Spanish as well, this will DEFINITELY give you an edge in Japanese! 3nodding