HIRAGANA
As mentioned, hiragana are used for common words in Japanese. There are 46 hiragana for the 46 Japanese syllables. On top of the 46 syllables, there are the 25 derived sounds and multiple compound sounds. But do not stress out! The derived and compound sounds are formed using the 46 syllables!
After mastering the hiragana, you ought to learn the different writing rules. Knowing all 46 hiragana is not enough to write in Japanese; you also need to study the writing rules that go hand-in-hand with the hiragana.
There are five vowels in Japanese.
Japanese is a consonant-vowel language. You can see all the syllables and sounds in this grid.
The last hiragana is the moraic consonant 'n', which is counted as a syllable.
You need to pay attention to some syllables; for instance, the syllable 'fu' in the 'h' table is pronounced 'fu' and not 'hu'. There is no 'hu' syllable in Japanese. Same with 'chi' and 'tsu' in the 't' table; there is no 'ti' nor 'tu' in Japanese.
There is also no 'wi', 'wu' or 'we' or 'yi' or 'ye'. Those do not exist anymore.
On this side, you can see the derived sounds and the compound sounds. The derived sounds will use either the 'tenten' (the two marks on top of the hiragana) or the 'maru' (the small circle on top of the hiragana) to change the sound.
Again, you need to pay attention, because some sounds do not have the expected pattern, such as 'ji'. There is no 'di' sound.
The compound sounds will be written using the 'i' section of each hiragana (except the stand-alone vowels) and either a mini 'ya', 'yu' or 'yo' to produce sounds like 'kya', 'sha', 'chu', 'nyo', etc.
This table is not complete, but you can make all the compound sounds using the 'i' section of each hiragana syllable and the mini 'ya', 'yu' and 'yo'.
Writing Japanese using the hiragana is quite simple. If you want to write 'Sakura' for instance, simply write 'sa-ku-ra' ➜ さくら.
On the next page, you can check out an animated version of each hiragana to see how each of them are written! Once you have mastered them all, check out the writing rules for hiragana!
I would also suggest to look for practice sheets online and print them, so you can practice at home!