• Is Japanese written vertically or horizontally?
  
  Traditionally, Japanese was written vertically. However, horizontal writing is now very common in business documents. Horizontal writing is the standard for translations, international brochures and websites.

• What are Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana?
  
  The written Japanese language is actually a combination of three types of characters. Kanji are the complex symbols that were adopted from China long ago. These are basically pictographs that represent a meaning rather than a specific sound. There are also two parallel phonetic character systems: Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana represent sounds in the Japanese language. These are usually consonant/vowel combinations such as ka-wa-sa-ki or mi-tsu-bi-shi. Katakana is similar to Hiragana but they are mostly used to write out the many foreign (usually English) words adopted into the Japanese language.

Example:
Three ways of writing the word “telephone”

When names of people, companies, places, etc. are translated into Japanese, it is usually a phonetic translation using Katakana.

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