How many types of japanse writing is there?

Answer 1

If you're talking about how many alphabets there are, the answer is 3.

Hiragana is a phonetic alphabet of 46 characters and is used for endings on different verb tenses, articles and other common parts of speech.

Kanji is a pictorial system based on Chinese characters. There are thousands of these. They are used alone or in conjunction with other kanji, and they represent the root form of almost every verb as well as almost every noun.

Katakana is a phonetic alphabet with 46 characters, a more angular and basic version of the hiragana alphabet. Katakana is used mainly for foreign words. A foreigner, for instance, would use katakana to phonetically spell his name, whereas a Japanese person would use kanji to spell his own name. Sports, country names, modern items such as TVs, computers, Hamburgers, etc. are all spelled with katakana characters. Also, advertisements and pop culture references occasionally use katakana because it's considered a "cool" looking type.

These writing systems are not used separately. The work together within sentences. For instance "I live in America," would have kanji symbols for the word "I" and the root of the word "live," hirigana characters for the present tense phonetics on "live" as well as the word "in," and katakana characters would be used to spell "America."