Japanese language is a matter of some debate in the academic community, as it has similarities with other asian and pacific oriented languages. While it's origins are difficult to pin down precisely, Japanese enjoys a large population of speakers due to Japan's social, economic and cultural influence.

Japanese writing systems consist of 3 distinct character sets: Kanji, Hirakana and Katakana. Japanese can be found written top to bottom, or horizontally like western languages; both styles can be found in Japan today.

Kanji are ideograms, introduced from Korea in the 5th century, and consisting of thousands of characters. Kanji denote nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Japanese kanji are complicated, because there is always at least two ways to pronounce them; a Chinese way and a Japanese way.

In the 9th century the Japanese developed Hirakana, which can be used to encode the entire Japanese language (unlike Kanji). Hirakana is the langauge children are taught first in school. However, Hirakana is usually used in combination with Kanji and Katakana. Katakana is phonetic, simple writing which is typically used to write words derived from western languages, technology words, loan words and some geographical vocabulary.

Grammar is relatively straightforward in Japanese, because gender articles and the distinction between singular and plural forms are rare. Conjugation of verbs is simple and almost free from exceptions.

Words are pronounced without strong primary and secondary accents, although their subtelty can be tricky for novices. There are few distinct sounds used in the language, and every vowel sound is pronounced. There are, however, many homonyms - words which sound the same but have different meanings.

There are many forms of some words which correspond to different levels of formality. Japanese language has casual, polite, very respectful, and honorific levels - keigo! These distinctions are important in Japanese society, in which members are careful to show respect to elders, people of higher status, etc. Part of the learning curve for Japanese is speaking appropriately to customers, elders, public figures, teachers, etc.