The first alphabet, hiragana, is used to represent actual Japanese words, such as "ringo" (apple), "daitai" (almost), "chotto" (a little), "dake" (only) or "ni" (to). Hiragana is also used for adjective and verb endings - more about that in a minute.

The syllables in "daitai", for example, are da, i, ta and i. Most syllables consist of either a vowel or a consonant and vowel. There is also the syllable "n", which can be used mid-word or at the end of a word, such as in "shinkansen" (bullet train), i.e. shi-n-ka-n-se-n - that's right, folks, six syllables.