The words actually start to look like words and not small pretty drawings

Japan has three alphabets; Hiragana and Katakana, which are the two small Japanese alphabets of 'only' about 2 x 48 characters, and Kanji, the Chinese alphabet with tens of thousands of characters.
We have been studying Hiragana since we started Japanese lessons in Brazil, which meant that we quite fast learned that again here, and this week we have almost learned Katakana.

To show you how Katakana differs from Hiragana, here are our names (Katakana is the official way of writing them, as this is the alphabet used for foreign words):

Barbara, written in Katakana: バーバラ
Barbara, written in Hiragana: ばあばら

Henrik, written in Katakana: ヘンリック
Henrik, written in Hiragana: へんりっく

Learning Katakana has been a very positive revelation for us. This week we have actually been able to read and understand several words in the myriad of signs always present in the city, like hotel, laundry, tiramisu and other non-Japanese-origin words.
The next weeks we will enjoy this, before we start to study the last alphabet, Kanji. Officially, you need to know 1945 kanji-characters for everyday use, but to be able to read a newspaper you need to know between 2000-3000 characters! Even the Japanese has difficulties reading Kanji. This will most likely be the challenge that we will never overcome...

Ganbatte kudasai!