How do people read Japanese?

Question

Is Japanese written phoenetically (sp?) like the English alphabet where each letter represents a sound? or does each character in Japanese not have a sound element to it?

Answer 1

Japanese is a phonetic language and is written as such in its most basic form, yes. Every character in the Japanese hiragana and katakana "alphabet" represent a sound and, by placing them together, you can create a word.
Kanji is the third writing form in Japanese and this is what people like getting tattoos of. It's intricate and represents an idea or specific word; meaning it's composed of multiple sounds from the Japanese language to work as one word.

Example:
わたしはがいこくじんです
That sentence is written entirely in hiragana. Outside of books for children, most Japanese writing will contain kanji as well. Also notice how there are no spaces to separate a word. Japanese readers can tell when a word stops and begins based on particles, which mark important things in a sentence such as the subject, object, direct object, etc.
That same example written is kanji would appear as this:
私は外国人です.

Answer 2

Japanese is not alphabetic. There are 3 primary parts to the writing system. Hiragana and Katagana are syllabaries. Each character represents not a sound but a syllable. Kanji are pictographs, and represent typically a large number of different syllables (one or more at a time). The syllable or syllable to be voiced in a given situation depends on the context, depending on the Hiragana or lack thereof that accompany them. Kanji are not combined with Katagana.

Answer 3

No sound element. The entire "word" or a bunching of symbols is what means something.

Answer 4

you read it like it sounds. like example:
a would sound like apple a
e would sound like enter e
i would sound like is i
o would sound like october o
u would sound like ugly u