Japanese Language and Alphabets.

[xX.Silver.Wings.Xx]

Heyy!! Just begging for some advice from people!
I started learning Japanese about a month and a half ago.
I've learnt a little bit of basic japanese.
But it's the alphabets I can't jam in my head... I have Hiragana and Katakana charts and a print out of the 1st Grade Kanji... but here's the problem... how they hell do you remember them?
Kanji's not all that important to me right now but I need to learn Hiragana and Katakana but I can only remember the hiragana for "n" and "ka". That's all I can remember no matter how much I read through the charts.
Does anyone have any tips for remembering them? (any ideas for remebering them even if it's not about these is helpful... hopefully..) Any vague ideas... anyone...?

[fire_of_avalon]

I actually had this same problem when I tried to learn Russian. I could speak it just fine, but when it came to reading and writing I was completely lost. Eventually I just gave up, because it wasn't all that important to me.

My friends who take Japanese classes tell me it helps to actually use the language, so reading Japanese books/manga and writing journals in Japanese would be a good start.

[Flying Mullet]

When I was learning Hiragana (and later Katakana), I practiced one line at a time. So first do the vowel line, then the 'K' line, then the 'S' line, then the 'T' line, and so on. I found this the easiest way to learn them. Don't worry if you don't have them all 100% at first because as you start working with the language more you'll learn that some characters are used more than others (and some are rarely used at all).

[Odaisé Gaelach]

The best thing to do is to get classes in it, especially if you're starting from scratch. It's far too hard learning something like Russian (;) FOA) on your own. Go to classes.

[Zeromus_X]

Yeah, it's best to learn them one row at a time. Then eventually, as you use them more and practice them, you'll memorize them.

Having a formal class will help alot. I can't see anyone learning any language without one.

I personally found Hiragana easier to memorize than Katakana.

Edit: And the most important thing you need to remember is to get the stroke order correct! That's really important.

[starseeker]

I found writing out each kana five times with the english written next to it to be really helpful.
Same goes for the kanji.