Users of Japanese online information outside of Japan have to face two principal obstacles. 1. (1) Japanese hardware with all the options to display Kana and Kanji characters is not sold outside Japan normally.2. (2) Bibliographic data or numerical information are presented by Japanese databases together with standardized comouter texts which are given in Kanji, in Kana or sometimes in combined texts. Therefore even for the interpretation of numerical data, calendar data etc. the help of an interpreter is necessary. It is shown that standard PC equipment can be used to display and print Kanji online data, and that standardized texts can be displayed in Latin characters.
