Week 1: hiragana, katakana and the sounds
Hiragana has 46 basic characters and is used for Japanese words and grammar. Katakana has the same 46 sounds and is used for foreign words, such as コーヒー, kōhī, coffee. Learn one set each week, and stop reading romanised Japanese as soon as you can.
The sounds are simple. Five vowels, close to Spanish ones, and almost every syllable is a consonant followed by a vowel. The r is a light tap, somewhere between r, l and d. Two things change the meaning of a word and deserve daily attention: vowel length, as in obasan, aunt, against obāsan, grandmother, and double consonants, as in kite, come, against kitte, stamp. Japanese also has pitch accent: hashi with a high-low pitch is chopsticks, and with a low-high pitch it is bridge. Copy the melody of the tutor rather than studying the rules.
Week 2: the masu form and the particles
Japanese verbs do not change for the person. Tabemasu means I eat, you eat, she eats and they eat. Four forms cover the first month: tabemasu, tabemasen, tabemashita and tabemasen deshita, for the present, the negative, the past and the past negative. Desu is the polite is.
The verb goes at the end, and small words called particles mark what each word is doing: wa for the topic, ga for the subject, o for the object, ni for a place you go to or a time, de for the place where something happens, and ka at the end for a question. Watashi wa kōhī o nomimasu: as for me, coffee, drink. Learn each particle inside a phrase, not from a table.
Week 3: the situations
Kōhī o kudasai, a coffee please, and sumimasen, which covers excuse me, sorry and thank you in one word, get you through most shops and cafés. Learn the numbers and the general counters hitotsu, futatsu and mittsu for one, two and three things. For introductions, learn hajimemashite, your name followed by desu, and yoroshiku onegaishimasu, which closes the introduction and has no English equivalent.
Then speak. Order at a café, handle a front-desk conversation, introduce yourself. Keep everything in the masu form; it is polite and it is never wrong with a stranger.
Week 4: the plain form and listening
Friends, family and television use the plain form: taberu, tabenai, tabeta. You do not need to speak it yet, but you need to recognise it, and other patterns are built on it. Listening is the real work of the fourth week. Japanese drops the subject whenever the context makes it clear, and the meaning of a sentence is decided at the end, by the verb. Listen to the end before you answer.
What about kanji?
Reading a newspaper needs the 2,136 jōyō kanji, each with more than one reading. You do not need any of them to speak. Once you can hold a conversation, learn the hundred or two hundred most common ones, in the words you already say. Learning them in that order is faster and far less discouraging than starting with the writing.
A daily routine that fits in five minutes
- One sound for the week. Start with long against short vowels, then double consonants, then the r.
- One short drill. A few phrases built around that sound. Say them, listen to what shifted, say them again.
- One short scene. One goal, one conversation, with someone answering you.
- Every day. Vowel length and pitch are habits of the ear and the mouth. They come from repetition.
How Mimica fits this plan
Mimica is an app for iOS and Android where you speak Japanese out loud with AI tutors and characters. You play roleplay scenes with a goal, such as ordering at a Tokyo café or handling a front-desk conversation, the tutor speaks first and waits for your answer, and it adapts to the level you chose during setup. Mimic practice works phrase by phrase and shows you which sounds shifted. Subtitles and instant translation are there in your own language whenever you need them. The Free plan gives you five minutes of speaking a day.
