Kana Stroke Endings

[Sabre]

Hi,

I've been looking for a good book for learning kana (I'm a complete newbie). I've noticed that in some books, they talk about the correct way to end each stroke. For example, in "Let's learn hiragana" by Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura, it says:

Second, there are three different ways to end a stroke. These are called tome, hane and harai.
Tome means "stop", so you must bring the pen or pencil to a complete stop and lift it off the paper at the end of the stroke
Hane means "jump". Therefore, you end the stroke with a reflex tail.
Harai means "sweeping". You write this ending by lifting the pen or pencil up gradually at the end of the stroke while your hand is still in motion.

But some books and most websites make no mention of how to end the strokes. Also, different sources appear to end some of the strokes differently. For example on page 6 of this pdf from CosCom, http://www.coscom.co.jp/ebook/kanawork/ ... ragana.pdf the third stroke of "ka" appears to be ended with a tome, whereas in "Let's learn hiragana" they end it with a hane.

So, now I'm a bit confused. How important is it to use the correct stroke endings? And what stroke endings should I use? Is the pdf from CosCom a good source to learn from?

Thanks in advance.

Sabre

[Jessi]

To be honest, I would not worry about the stroke endings for kana - all of the different endings and stuff would like they would be important if you were doing calligraphy or something, but other than that as long as the character has the right shape and form, it'll be fine. Instead, I'd focus on getting the stroke order right - this will make writing them a lot easier.

[Sabre]

ok, thanks for that.