HI BERT, I CAN"T HELP YOU WITH THE JAPANESE,BUT...
this Forum has many great people who can & will help you. If you use the seach function and read many of the old posts, this Forum has much more info then you could find in 10 books. In looking at the old posts, watch for links to other great teaching cites. There are probably well over 50 web sites that can help you with the alphabets(3) and vocab, writing etc. . The people on this site are like 1 big family so stick around & enjoy. Sometines things are kind of slow and it might take a while for someone to get back to you. If you set your PC to get E-Mail notification, when you get an answer, it will let you know!
Good Luck,
Frank