Henohenomoheji

There are three writing systems (hiragana, katakana, and kanji) in the Japanese language and the Henohenomoheji man is drawn using hiragana characters. Hiragana are Japanese phonetic characters composed of forty-six basic characters. These characters indicate how a word or phrase is pronounced. This writing system is derived from kanji, which are Chinese characters used in Japanese writing. Hiragana characters are rounded and each stroke generally starts from left to right and top to bottom. Japanese is traditionally written vertically on a page from right to left and many books are still printed that way (meaning that one would read a Japanese book from the opposite side of a Western book). Recently, Japanese is sometimes written horizontally from left to right. Hiragana are taught in elementary schools in Japan and “henohenomoheji” is a face drawn by Japanese schoolchildren using hiragana characters.


With the basics of hiragana in mind, please give a warm welcome the Henohenomoheji man!!

Here is link to Usagi-Chan's Genki Resource Page, which has great materials for learning hiragana and it has the game Hiragana Drag-n-Drop to test your knowledge (it is addicting):
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/sheaa/projects/genki/hira_main.html

Using the link above, can you identify each hiragana character in the Henohenomoheji man?