The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:
* Kanji, adopted Chinese characters
* Kana, a pair of syllabaries (like phonetic alphabets), consisting of
o Hiragana, used for native Japanese words, and
o Katakana, used for foreign words and names, loanwords, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes to replace kanji or hiragana for emphasis.
For more details, please see Japanese writing system - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system