Japanese has three different writing systems (four if you count their use of the Roman alphabet, known as “romaji”): katakana, hiragana and kanji. The first two are syllabaries collectively referred to as "kana" in which each character represents a single, specific sound; kanji is Japan’s adaption of the Chinese writing system in which characters are used and combined to represent concepts. The Ministry of Education dictates that one needs to know 2,136 kanji characters to be considered literate.