There are so many apps and programs out there for learning hiragana and katakana. And honestly, I don't really think it matters all that much which ones you use or don't use.

A 5-second search on Google for “best apps for learning hiragana and katakana" brought up this smartphone app that looks pretty solid:

The homework for Ninja Tool #1 is to find an app like this or a program online that will walk you through learning hiragana and katakana. As you learn them, you'll also learn Japanese pronunciation naturally, because all of the good apps for hiragana and katakana should also have native pronunciation for each character..

一石二鳥！/ isseki nichou / “Killing two birds with one stone." (Literally the same phrase in Japanese: 一one + 石stone + 二two + 鳥bird.)

A couple of things to be careful for when choosing your hiragana and katakana learning tool:

1. Do not pay money for this. It will only take you a few days to learn hiragana and katakana. Maybe a week or two at most. As such, it doesn't make sense to pay for an app, program, or lesson that you'll be deleting a month from now. Companies that are selling packages on how to learn these characters are ripping you off. It can be done for free.
   
2. Make sure that the app or program you choose has audio for each of the characters. We want to learn pronunciation alongside hiragana and katakana.
   
3. Don't worry about studying these until you get to Phase #2. All you need to do right now is pick an app or program and download it. That's all! (Of course, motivated kids can study ahead of time should they wish to do so.)

Maybe you've noticed that I'm not mentioning some other things, namely kanji and romaji.

The Romanization of Japanese refers to using roman letters ( romaji) to transcribe Japanese sounds. As for romaji, I'll keep this short and sweet: If you study Japanese with romaji you are sabotaging yourself. It's super-detrimental. You must, must, must learn at least hiragana and katakana before you study Japanese any longer than a week or so (which is why we will be mastering them right as we dive into Phase #2).

But your real concern probably isn't Romaji. I'm guessing it's kanji, yeah? That crazy difficult one that you've heard so many horror stories about? Yeah, that would be kanji.

To put it bluntly, don't worry about kanji yet.

Many will say that learning the kanji is the most difficult aspect of learning Japanese. I used to say this, too. But that was before I actually learned the kanji. Looking back, it wasn't that difficult at all. Yeah, it took a long time, because it's a lot of information, but learning them all is actually pretty straightforward.

Plus, you will have something that I didn't have: Someone walking you through a time-efficient, effective, step-by-step process of learning the kanji. I'll talk about this a little bit more later on in Phase #1 and a lot more in Phase #2.

For the time being, let's keep moving through the Vocab Prep Section.