Has this ever happened to you? A friend in another country e-mails a plea for help in finding information in Japanese due to their encountering any one of several obstacles. For instance, the operating system or software on the computer they are using might not be able to input Japanese or read it. Or the friend might simply lack the knowhow about Japan needed to do a search.
I frequently hunt for information on Japanese Web sites. The three most common items I search for are: corporate data, including the English equivalents of the names of companies or organizations and their directors; readings of the kanji in people's names; and locations or telephone numbers of restaurants, hotels and other businesses.
The good news is that 検索 (kensaku, searches) in Google, Yahoo and other search engines do a fine job using kanji or kana characters. The bad news is that readings of Japanese personal and place names can be notoriously capricious, so verifying how to render them in Roman letters may require extra effort. It's simply not safe to rely on assumptions.
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