1.) Kanji Characters: Kanji (literally, "Chinese characters") are pictograms developed from concepts. Each Kanji character has both a sound and a meaning. Each "syllable" of your name will be represented by a character with a meaning. For example, the three Kanji characters below represent the name "Smith". In Japanese, the sound is SU MI SU. The left-most character, "SU" means "master", the middle character,"MI" means "see", and the right-most character "SU" means "sandbank".

2.) Hiragana Characters: Hiragana is nearly 100% phonetic and it is used mainly for representing words native to Japanese. Hiragana is a syllabary, so each character represents a sound only, without any meaning, in the same way that the syllable "bab" in English gives a sound without meaning. The Hiragana style is simple and curvy. Below is the name "Smith" (SU MI SU) in Hiragana characters.

3.) Katakana Characters: To write foreign-borrowed words (such as "KON PYU TA" -- "computer") and foreign names, Katakana is used. Katakana is a syllabary that is virutally identical to Hiragana, but the lines are more angular. Here is the name "Smith" again, this time in Katakana:

4.) Mixed Characters: This would be a combination of two or all three of the above writing systems and is necessary when including something such as a non-Japanese name with a discipline, such as "Karate".