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With which writing system to start: Japanese has three writing systems. Hiragana Katakana Kanji First of all let’s look at how those three are being used: Katakana is mostly used for words with their origin in other languages. For example loan words like cake ケーキ (kēki) juice ジュース (jyūsu) But also for names that aren’t Japanese. You can also see them being used for onomatopoeia like sparkling キラキラ (kirakira) Hiragana is mostly used for grammatical purposes. Verb stems, particles etc. But there are also words in Japanese that are commonly written in hiragana although they have an existing kanji. For example: hello こんにちは　(konnichiha) Which brings us to Kanji: Kanji are words. Objects, adjectives, verbs etc. They are necessary to give written Japanese structure and a clear meaning. Kanji can be overwhelming for people who decide to learn Japanese. As one kanji can have different readings, and there are so many existing. But they are essential and practical. What to learn first? You start with Hiragana and Katakana. Which one of them first doesn’t matter. You could also learn them at the same time together. I started with Hiragana when I was self studying Japanese. My university started with Katakana. When you finished learning Hiragana and Katakana, in a way that you can write and read words etc. without looking at a table, you start learning kanji. I’d get a Japanese textbook and learn the kanji that appears in the chapters of your book. Instead of trying to learn them after JLPT, one kanji at a time. That’s not really beneficial and makes it more complicated. The best way to study kanji is to learn them like vocabulary! I hope this post answered your question on which one to learn first 😆 As always thank you for watching and if there are any more questions, feel free to ask them in the comments 🩵