Renata, Regarding your follow up question, my advice is memrise.com. Their methods are awesome. They make learning a funny thing to do - how it should be... I am now on my second japanese course there. Meet the first one (and the site): http://www.memrise.com/course/12/introduction-to-japanese/

Well, you just need to practise reading and writing kana on a daily basis and you'll master it very quickly (2 weeks should be more than enough if you practise for 1 hour every day). Get a hiragana table (like this one: http://www.kanpai-japan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/tableau-hiragana.jpg) and put it on your wall. Find simple Japanese sentences written in both hiragana and rōmaji (you’ll find some here: http://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/content.cfm/japanese-lesson-1-introductions), then hide the kana, try to rewrite it and check with the original version. Create a set of flashcards (with Japanese characters or simple words on one side and rōmaji on the other side) so you can practise anywhere you go. Regarding textbooks, a good textbook & workbook would certainly help (my recommendation is “Genki” which is overally a great resource, with lots of exercises), but in standard textbooks there’s little space for exercises that are strictly aimed at helping you remember the kana and in case of textbooks published in Japan (e.g. “Minna no Nihongo”), all is written in Japanese characters right from the first unit, so you have to remember hiragana to be able to use them at all. I’m sure there are some books made solely for learning the kana, but as I said it’s really not that difficult to remember it by yourself, so imho you don’t have to spend your money for them (you didn’t have problems with remembering the alphabet as a little kid, so hiragana shouldn’t be a problem for you either).

Thank you! I honestly didn't know about that as a beginner. Are there any websites/textbooks to practice this from?

し = shi ->　じ = ji ->　じょ = jo ->　じょう = jō (the macron above 'o' indicates that it's a long vowel; note that it's written as 'ou' in hiragana but pronounced as a long 'o') す = su ->　ず = zu に = ni This article should help you understand the basics of the Japanese writing system: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/hiragana Feel free to ask me if you have any further questions.