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I know there's あいうえお, but what about at the consonant level? Also, are there
any common mnemonics used by Japanese children to remember these?
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kana mnemonics
What is the equivalent of "alphabetical order" in Japanese?
Hiragana syllables are always schematised in a given order which is this one
(from right to left, as you may already know):

* * *

**HIRAGANA** ![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4i20B.png)

* * *

**KATAKANA** ![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HpQ3E.jpg)

* * *

After a while I started Japanese, I also found this video, the [Japanese
Alphabet song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrMkJAzbWQc) (only for
hiragana), that can be interesting for absolute beginners.

One of the best ways to remember Hiragana (and Katakana as well), in my
opinion, is to write vocabulary words using Hiragana. It might seem banal, but
it works.  
After you master it, you can start learning Kanji to substitute the "hiragana
word" with the appropriate Kanji. I remember I used to write them, some
examples are:

  * しんせつ ( _kindness/gentleness_ which is 親切);
  * つくえ ( _desk/table_ which is 机);
  * やま ( _mountain_ which is 山).
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answer
The order used today pretty much everywhere is called
[Gojūon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goj%C5%ABon), and this is what Alenanno
has described, but there's also a traditional order, with [its own
song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8sBzj8EUxc), called
[Iroha](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha). This order is actually based on
the poem (instead of the other way around), and interestingly enough, it is
possible because the poem managed to include every letter of the traditional
alphabet exactly once. It was less useful than the Gojūon, because you needed
to remember the song to use it, and over time the kana have lost two of the
letters in Iroha (ゑ and ゐ) and gained a new one (ん).

> いろはにほへと  
>  ちりぬるを  
>  わかよたれそ  
>  つねならむ  
>  うゐのおくやま  
>  けふこえて  
>  あさきゆめみし  
>  ゑひもせす
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answer
The order is

## あ か さ た な は ま や ら わ

If you have a Japanese cell phone, you can use the keypad to check the order,
which runs from the 1 to 0 keys. If you have an iPhone, you can activate a Ten
Key Japanese keyboard in the Keyboard settings, which is in the same order.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2XvVW.jpg)

You can also listen to this [cheesy Japanese hip-hop song by
Kreva](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60Jkm89wx8) to hammer it into your
head. The chorus is:

> 猫はﾆｬｰ 犬ならﾜﾝ  
>  象はﾊﾟｵｰﾝ ライオンがｵｰｯ  
>  僕たちは 人間だもん  
>  あかさたなはまやらわをぉぉん

I don't know if [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUJTtnRpQzk) is
famous, but it runs through each of the groups and makes a story. [This
one](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrMkJAzbWQc&feature=related) is annoying
enough to be memorable
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answer
Nevan King answer is wrong actually. That's not the order of the Hiragana
alphabet. That's just a convention used on cell keyboards, because they have
few buttons at their disposal. The correct answer is the one above by
Alenanno, albeit presented that way it MUST be read top to bottom then left to
right. i.e. a, i, u e o, ka, ki, ku ke, ko sa, shi su, etc...
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