Kana

Kana consists of Katakana and Hiragana and are used in the syllable-based Japanese writing system. Hiragana is used for grammatical purposes, such as verb endings and prepositions; see particles.

The katakana are mostly angular versions of the more flowing, script-like hiragana. The two systems of syllabary are so similar that you can convert from one to another in Unicode by adding or subtracting an offset.