Practice. How do you recognise roman characters? Do you only see "A", or do other images come into your head (like "apple")? Do the same thing with the hiragana and katakana (good luck with the kanji!)... see how they're shown in childrens' books, write them down yourself and make doodles around them. It's all a matter of becoming familiar with the image.

Peachey is right. You need to read,copy and write them many times until you memorize and recognize their images. It is a process !

Hi Shelly these 2 websites are excellent # Japanese Kanji Dictionary Online Japanese Kanji dictionary. Japanese pronunciation. lookup stroke counts, stroke order, radical, English meaning, reading with sound files, examples. www.saiga-jp.com/kanji_dictionary.html - Cached - Similar # Representation of Japanese Language Characters on the WWW 6 Jul 2009 ... To set your Netscape Communicator (UNIX/X Window System version) to recognize Japanese characters, carry out the following steps: ... www.irt.org/articles/js134/index.htm