I recently started learning the Japanese language. After learning the syllabic Japanese kana (かな) scripts, hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ), I realized that without knowing any kanji (漢字) I was not able to read any Japanese publications.

Beside the The Tale of Genji (源氏物語 Genji Monogatari), writen in the11th century by a court lady named Murasaki Shikibu, at a time where kakana was originally limited to to men and used in official documents and hiragana was used for informal writing and mostly by woman, there are very few current documents written only using kana.

You may wondering why Japanese use different type of characters set, such as hiragana, katakana, and kanji. The principal reason is that hiragana is mostly used to write native words, for which there are no kanji or the kanji form might be obscure or too formal for the reader, or to provide additional particles or suffixes information, while katakana is mostly used to introduce foreign words or names.  

In short, even if you are familiar with hiragana and katakana, if you do no know a basic few thousand kanji characters, you will not be able to read any Japanese documents, beside scholar or children books. There are some conversion made to provide kanji translation into hiragana, but those are not so popular because the reader still needs to know the Japanese meaning, so most of the Japanese documents are translates into the reader’s native language.

I was doing some researches about Japan on The Mixxer’s blog and found an entry for the Japan Close-up  magazine which is an English-language monthly magazine providing excellent information about Japan, but since this magazine is written in English, it will not help me regarding improving my Japanese language pursue.

For this purpose, to learn the Japanese language and culture, I would like to introduce the monthly magazine Hiragana Times (japan version), which is available as printed edition or on-line digital version, and which contents Japanese articles with multi-level texts presentation.

The multi-level texts are a combination of furigana and English translation.  Furigana is a Japanese reading aid, consisting of smaller size kana characters to indicate the pronunciation of a kanji character, so while reading hiragana you will be able to learn some kanji.

There is an English translation under each Japanese word and an additional complete phrase translation. In the digital version, some articles include an English and Japanese audio aid. There is also a roman-ji translation if you are not familiar with the hiragana characters or if you want to write the text into a pc using a roman characters text editor. 

The online edition can be downloaded using a pc, a smartphone, or a tablet. Both e-book and pdf formats are provided. The audio mp3 files can be used on any digital device.  

Each month, few sample articles and audio recording are also accessible, allowing you to become familiar with this magazine online format.