Japanese writing systems

There’s 4 different writing system in Japanese.

Romaji

This is basically just latin alphabet applied to Japanese phonetic. It’s used to convey Japanese sounds to non-Japanese speakers/languages and those not familiar with the traditional Japanese writing systems.

Hiragana

Symbols like あいうえお,たちつてと, etc. This is the bread and butter of Japanese. You can spell every single word using this syllabary.

Katakana

Symbols like アイウエオ,タチツテト, etc. It is almost the same as hiragana, except it’s often used to spell foreign words or to give a bold/italics-like emphasis to Japanese words. You can compare it to WRITING IN ALL CAPS in English.

Kanji#

This is the Chinese logographic writing system that has been historically adpoted by Japanese centuries ago due to Chinese influence.