this volume is meant as a companion to the never forget kanji series of books aimed at helping students to memorize the full set of japanese kanji required for fluency in everyday life. in order to memorize kanji however, you must know how to pronounce them and pronunciations are given using hiragana and katakana, the japanese phonetic syllabaries. in our kanji volumes we provide pronunciations using hiragana and katakana only: pronunciation using the roman alphabet is deliberately omitted as this leads to poor articulation. learning hiragana and katakana is the first step towards kanji fluency and must not be skipped. memorizing hiragana and katakana is much easier than memorizing kanji and can be achieved in a matter of a few days. this volume will help you achieve this goal using the same mnemonic methods as in the later kanji volumes.