[jesselt]

That was extremely helpful, alanX, great job.


Japanese uses Hiragana and Katakana characters in addition to Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters.) Because the Kanji were taken directly from the Chinese language, if you just saw some Kanji you wouldn't really be able to tell if it was Japanese or Chinese unless you spoke one of the languages. Kanji in Japanese has the same pronunciation as the Chinese plus one or several more pronunciations from Japanese.