There are three different types of writting in Japanese: kanji, hiragana and katakana.Hiragana and katakana apply to kana, a kind of writting which was probably invented in the NARA or NEHIANage (in the last part of the VIII century) these two are the really Japanese writting. Kanji is a kind of writting of Chinese origin formed by a large list of ideograms.

All these get a language difficult to write, but really very fun to learn.