Hiragana (ひらがな)

Basically…

Hiragana is one of Japan’s alphabets.

A little Deeper

There are actually three alphabets in Japanese. They are:

・Hiragana (ひらがな)
・Katakana (カタカナ)
・Kanji (漢字)

Hiragana is the most basic out of these three. It is like the ABC’s in English. There are about 50 characters. They look like this:

すし

Which says sushi.

https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/

What do they sound like?

Every character has one sound.
For example, look at the two hiragana below:

す is pronounced su
し is pronounced shi

Put them together

すし is pronounced sushi

Yes the word sushi

Putting it all Together

So, when you hear Hiragana, just think of it as Japan’s ABCs.