Japanese is written in a syllabic writing system called kana. The two kana systems are hiragana and katakana. Japanese is also written in kanji, a writing script that was introduced into Japan from ancient China.
While modern Japanese is written left to right and top to bottom like most languages, It can still be written in its traditional way of top to bottom and right to left.
The term kana itself literally means "borrowed characters". There are two types of kana: Hiragana and katakana.
Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words, Chinese borrowed words, and grammatical functions. Its rounder shapes and simple strokes distinguishes it from katakana and kanji. Knowing how to read and write hiragana is one of the first step of learning Japanese.