The three different Japanese character sets

Japanese has three main character-sets: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.

Hiragana is an alphabet used for writing how to say Japanese words and names. There are about 50 main characters, and some are paired/annotated to generate a total of around 100 sounds. These symbols are generally identified by soft curves, and 1-4 strokes. For example, the Hiragana for "arrigato" (thank-you) is ありがとう, that is, あ[a]り[ri]が[ga]と[to]う[u].

Katakana is another alphabet, with different symbols to represent the same sounds as Hiragana. This one is used to write foreign words and names phonetically. In contrast to Hiragana, Katakana is characterized with sharp corners and points that will take your eye out. So my name, "Aedan", is written in Katakana as エイデン, meaning エ[e]イ[i]デ[de]ン[n]. I carefully chose this transcription, and in fact my name is more likely to be pronounced correctly by someone reading it in Katakana than English.

Kanji is not an alphabet, but rather a set of characters where generally each character represents a word or meaning. Many words are composed of a sequence of Kanji characters each contributing to the meaning. For example wheat is written as 小麦, meaning little (小) grain (麦). Kanji often contain many more strokes than Hiragana or Katakana characters.

Learning Kanji one of the major challenges of learning Japanese: there are over 2000 standard Kanji, knowing how to write a symbol doesn't tell you how to pronounce it, and symbols can have multiple different meanings and pronunciations.