About the writing system...
 

Hi, I have a book that has charts and tables of the Hiragana and Katakana
letters (or characters.) I wanted to know if the sound that the letter makes
is also the name of the letter. I know its a confusing thing to ask, here is an
example.

(Hiragana character)
ひ makes the sound hi, is that also the name of the letter?
I think it probably is, I just want to make sure so I don't look dumb on the long run.:)

Both hiragana and katakana are syllabaries, and each individual hiragana or katakana are characters and not letters. That is important. Also, each hiragana and katakana have only one sound and no meaning. You also refer to each individual character by its sound. So, in your example, ひ is "hi", etc.


As to the sounds, try this:

Japan With Kids - Hiragana Chart With Sound

Thanks:), I know what sound they make, I just wanted to know if there is sort of a name to the/syllabaries I guess. (tell me if thats not how I should use the word.) I thought there was like the name A and the sound it makes is a... sorry if I make things so confusing. But Thanks anyway, now I understand there is no name, and there not evon letters.

Hiragana is a syllabary and it consists of a group of characters. Kanji are characters, too. I am not sure what do you mean by a "name". Hiragana characters do not mean anything, they simply represent sounds. So, as i said above, ひ is "hi", that is it.

And it's pronounced like the English word "he", not the greeting "hi" or "high"

I'm 100% sure OP is thinking about how in English each letter has a name in addition to its sounds. For example, the sentence, "'Mom' begins with the letter 'm'" has us using the name for "m," which sounds like "imm." This is the name of the letter. "ei, bee, see, dee, ef, jee, aitch, eye, jay, kay, ell, imm, inn, oh, pee, kyuu, arr, etc." Those are the pronunciations of the names of letters in English. Spanish is the same. For example, "y" is (well, was, until last year) named "i griega," which can be translated into English as "Greek 'i.'" Obviously the name and sound are different! When saying the word "cayo," you say "cayo," not "caigriegao"!

I've never heard anyone refer to the names of kana, so I'm not sure the concept actually exists in Japanese. Even if there is a concept of the name of a kana, it is exactly like the pronunciation of the sound itself. So the "name" for ひ is ひ, and it pronounced exactly the same, to stretch a Western analogy into Japanese.

A simple question, but I hadn't thought of it before.... Does Japan have spelling bees? And if they did (not sure they do based on these posts), how do they go about it?

The concept of a spelling bee originates in the US, and Wikipedia suggests "spelling bee" is specifically an English-language thing. All my Google searches for spelling bees in Japan turned up only English-language spelling bees in Japan.

No such things as spelling bees in Japan as the letters are read in the same way as they are written.

Basically, spelling is no different than saying the word.

There are, on the other hand, kanji events where people compete to write the more complex characters.

Thanks for the research! Based on what was said here, I was really doubting the concept would work there....

They just separate the sounds to spell things out. I remember a scene from an anime that worked like this. I realize a lot of people are down on anime, but I can't see how that would affect the validity:

"My name is あんず"
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that."
"あんず! Don't you remember me?"
"I still didn't catch that."
"あ! ん! ず!"

Like she were saying separate words.

Japan *does* have kanji contests, but they don't work like spelling bees, since they are necessarily written. There are even kanji exams that you can take for bragging rights. One of the recent prime ministers made a lot of Bush-like gaffes with reading kanji wrong while giving prompted speeches. The number of citizens taking the kanji exams skyrocketed afterwards.
Kanji kentei - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you're (for example) talking over the phone, and need to explain the kanji of a word to someone else on the other line (such as your name), since almost every kanji has a kunyomi as well as an onyomi, you can usually give the other pronunciation to help out. "That's もと as in ほん" for 本. Otherwise you can give a word that begins with the right kanji, just like we say "R like Roger." "意 as in 意味." Finally you can describe the parts of the character itself. "弧 with 弓 on the left, not 孤 with 子." (Although that last one would probably require an additional 子 like 子供)

In person, you can write the kanji in the air or on your palm with your finger, which is just faster sometimes. Be sure to use the right stroke order.

I seriously hope people don't do that with complex kanji, that would be creepy.

I also think I need to get level 1 on that kentei exam before my life ends.