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Furigana

Furigana writing system is used in modern publications (print and digital). It is a reading aid, consisting of small text sized Kana representation on top of Kanji words. Furigana style of writing characters is sometimes called as "Ruby Characters". "Ruby" is actually name of a typeface that has a height of 5.5 points. This was introduced by British typographers and used for adding annotations in printed documents.

Soon will be adding couple of examples.

Meanwhile, check out this Hiragana chart.

Hiragana Chart

This ordering of Kana is called Gojuon ordering.
Basically the grid is 5 x 10 = 50 and hence the name Goju.
Btw Goju means 50, which is formed by Go x Jyu.
Go means 5 and Jyu means 10.

NOTES:
The letters are ordered from left to right as that is how modern Japanese text and reading materials are written. Traditionally the chart will have letters ordered from top to bottom and right to left. So in case if you come across a chart like this top to bottom or right to left, do not get surprised.

TIPS:
As you can note again, remember to split up Japanese words to understand the formation and meaning. For example: by understanding the above you know jyu stands for 10. Let us say, you have learned NI is for Two. Now you can make 20 by combining Ni + Jyu = NiJyu.

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