Getting Started with Japanese: A Beginner's Roadmap

Start with kana, not kanji

Japanese uses three writing systems. The two you learn first are hiragana and katakana — together called kana. Each is a small, fixed set of phonetic characters (46 basic each), and once you know them you can read the sound of almost anything written in Japanese.

Hiragana is used for grammar and native words; katakana is used for foreign loanwords like コーヒー (coffee). Learn these two before touching kanji — they are the foundation everything else sits on, and most beginners can read both within a couple of weeks of daily practice.

Kanji — the characters borrowed from Chinese — come next, and they come gradually. You do not memorize thousands up front; you meet them a few at a time, attached to words you are already learning.

From first words to first sentences

Once kana clicks, you build vocabulary and a handful of sentence patterns at the same time. Early Japanese grammar is friendly: there are no articles (a/the), nouns do not change for plural, and the core pattern — topic, then information, then verb — repeats everywhere.

You learn to introduce yourself, say where things are, count, tell the time, and ask simple questions. Particles like は, を, and に do the work that word order does in English, so a little particle practice goes a long way early on.

The goal of this stage is not perfection — it is getting comfortable making real sentences out loud and recognizing them when you read or hear them.

What "Pre-N5" means

JLPT N5 is the lowest official exam level, but it already assumes you can read kana fluently and know some basic vocabulary and grammar. "Pre-N5" is the ground floor below it — the absolute-beginner stage that gets you ready to start N5 in the first place.

A good Pre-N5 course closes that gap: it teaches all the kana, a starter set of high-frequency words and kanji, greetings and self-introduction, and the first sentence patterns — so that when you open the N5 course, nothing feels like a foreign alphabet.

At Dreamax, Pre-N5 Starter is a complete, free course built exactly for this. It takes a true beginner from zero kana up to the doorstep of N5.

A realistic first-3-months plan

Steady beats intense. Twenty to thirty focused minutes a day will move you faster than a three-hour cram once a week, because language sticks through repeated, spaced contact.

• •Weeks 1–2: Learn hiragana, then katakana. Read everything you can sound out, even if you do not know the meaning yet.
• •Weeks 3–6: First 100–150 words and basic patterns — greetings, self-introduction, this/that, numbers, time. Start meeting your first kanji.
• •Weeks 7–12: Build to short conversations and simple readings; review old words daily so they stay. By the end you are ready to begin N5.

Dreamax supports this plan with structured lessons, spaced-repetition review that resurfaces words right before you would forget them, pronunciation practice, and graded reading — so daily progress is built in, not left to willpower.

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