amazon japan and furigana?

[old_mate]

Hi, I was going to place an order at amazon japan, and I came across something I couldn't understand. When it asked me to make an account it had a space for "furigana". What does this mean?

Also, is it possible to use my existing amazon.com account at amazonn.jp?

thanks

[thawtz]

I can only say furigana is little letters for sounding out more complex chinese or otherwise unusual characters. But if you don't know this then you probably don't know japanese so having space for them probably wouldn't help.

[cultshock]

Furigana are the small hirigana characters that can accompany kanji (the Chinese characters that the Japanese language uses). This is often done so that people who can't read the kanji characters (usually children who haven't learned alot of kanji yet) can read the more easily understandable hirigana characters instead.

Perhaps the space for "furigana" on Amazon.jp, is so Japanese people can enter their name in hirigana characters (usually, Japanese names use kanji, and that is what they would use to fill out the normal name field on the form). At any rate, a foreign name shouldn't be written in hirigana, and since most foreigners wouldn't know how to write their name in Japanese (katakana characters), you can probably leave the field blank.

(OK, I probably didn't have to give a long explanation, but maybe someone was curious. :) )

EDIT: D'oh, thawtz gave a shorter simpler answer while I was typing all this out! :lol:

[old_mate]

Thank you.