Answer:
Kanji is a symbolic type alphabet used by the Japanese to write. It is derived from the Chinese written symbols and has many similarities with Chinese.
Each symbol has a meaning or whole word associated with it, as opposed to the English alphabet where we only have individual letters that don't mean anything on their own.
The Japanese have 4 writing systems:
1. Hiragana (for native Japanese words)
2. Katakana (for foreign/imported words and to emphasise a word)
3. Kanji (symbolic alphabet)
4. Romaji (This is essentially the English alphabet that they include in some of their day-to--day life, mostly numbers)
Kanji contains up to 40,000 different symbols, but most Japanese people know between 1,000-4,000.