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I just started learning Japanese and I'm trying to understand the whole kanji
thing. The book I'm using gives some kanjis and then some exercise of the
type: "Write the reading of the following kanji in hiragana", follows. I don't
really get them. Like this example:

  1. 男子トイレ and according to the answer sheet the book provides, the reading of this word is だんし.

Can someone please explain what is going on here, what is happening with the
extra katakana there is in the word? Are these two different words or are they
together. And how do you decide which reading (Chinese, Japanese, irregular)
you use? Or, is it by pure memorization?
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kanji readings hiragana
Write the reading of the following kanji in hiragana!
There is a lot of memorization involved for new learners of Japanese.

Let me separate your points... In this case, the katakana you're confused by
is a second word, and according to your text instructions, you can safely
ignore it. Though you should probably try and memorize your katakana and
hiragana readings as soon as possible, since they are sound based and should
not be all that hard. A few hours with flashcards does a lot of good for
memorizing the kana.

Secondly, it might help you to know that most Japanese kanji use their
Japanese reading when standing "alone", but switch to their Chinese reading
when combined with other kanji. It's not a perfect "either/or" situation, but
it is _often_ true, as it is in this case.

It may be hard to memorize every reading of 男 and every reading of 子, but the
combination of those two, 男子 , is a very very common word in Japanese, so you
should do your best to memorize that pairing and its reading. As you might
guess from what I said above, it's the Chinese reading. As you found in the
book, the reading is だんし. If you know the anime "Daily Lives of High School
Boys", you will have heard this word dozens if not hundreds of times. It's
literally in the title. ^_^
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2018-05-03T07:03:40.850
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男子 is だんし in hiragana. トイレ (katakana word for "toilet") is not the scope of
that question, but I think it was added just to add the context and
disambiguate the reading. You can safely ignore the katakana part and just do
what is instructed; "Write the reading of the following **kanji** ". If you
have already mastered kana, you can already tell which characters are kanji
and which are not, right?

You can read 男子 as だんし in 99.9% of the time in modern Japanese, but the kanji
男子 also has a rare historical reading,
[おのこ](https://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E3%82%92%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93) (をのこ). In
archaic documents, you may have to read 男子 as おのこ. But with トイレ added, you can
be 100% sure that this is not in a historical context and the 男子 part is read
as だんし. (You can forget the reading おのこ until you reach an advanced level.)

男子トイレ is a common set phrase meaning "men's toilet" or "gentlemen's lavatory".
If you wonder why 子 is used here, see [女子 vs 女の子
nuances](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/33913/5010) and [What are the
differences between 女子{じょし}, 娘子{じょうし} and
女{おんな}の子{こ}?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/57674/5010)
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