Katakana
Katakana is where the loanwords live — and where the lookalike characters hide. The charts below pair every character with a word Miki actually uses, and the callout boxes settle the famous troublemakers for good.
Tap any character to watch it drawn stroke by stroke.
Dakuten & Handakuten
Two little strokes (゛) or a small circle (゜) shift the sound — カ (ka) becomes ガ (ga), ハ (ha) becomes パ (pa). Same shapes, voiced.
Small Kana
Written small, these don't stand alone — the little ッ doubles the next consonant, and ャ/ュ/ョ fuse onto the kana before them (シ + ャ = sha). Loanwords lean on them constantly.
The famous troublemakers, settled
See the tell in motion
These two pairs trip up everyone, and the fix is the same both times: it's the direction of one long stroke. Watch them draw side by side.
Watch where the long stroke goes. シ (shi) sweeps up from below; ツ (tsu) falls from above. Up from below is shi, down from above is tsu.
Same tell, one stroke smaller. ソ (so) comes down from the top; ン (n) sweeps up from the bottom. Down is so, up is n.
Stroke-order data from KanjiVG (kanjivg.tagaini.net), CC BY-SA 3.0.