Japanese uses a writing system that consists of three parts. They are hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana together are called kana. These two sets of characters are the closest things to what we would consider an alphabet. Hiragana and katakana are a series of sounds that when combined make words whereas kanji are characters that are words themselves. While they can be combined to make other words, they differ from kana because the combinations are what we would think of as compound words.
