Written
文語
While Japanese has relatively few sounds it can prove rather complex to read. This stems from the fact that there are several writing systems in use, in parallel.
You can expect to see many signs written with a combination of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji all mixed together. Romaji however is usually reserved for text books when learning the language.
There are more and more signs appearing with English translation, which can prove very useful... and sometimes even highly amusing in the form of what is known as 'Engrish'.
Romaji...
This is quite simply the Latin alphabet representation of Japanese sounds and words to make it easier to phonetically spell and read for Westerners.
Kanji...
The most complex system is the 'Kanji'. These are pictographic symbols derived from Chinese characters and number in the thousands, each character depicting a concept or idea in itself.
Hiragana...
There are just over 100 hiragana characters. They are relatively easy to grasp, and they are rigid in their pronunciation.
Each character has a definite sound, it does not alter based on the word, it is always that sound. There are no silent consonants or other such intricacies as sometimes found in English.
Katakana...
These characters are used to write borrowed words, as taken from English or other sources.
This character set mirrors hiragana sounds. Some of the characters visually resemble their hiragana counterparts while others differ quite significantly.
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