Hiragana and katakana are the characters used to represent Japanese sounds. The alphabetic form of these characters is called romaji. For example, the character sakura is written differently in kanji, hiragana, and katakana, but they all match the Japanese sounds. However, alphabetized words are not always spelled out the way they are pronounced in Japanese. For example, the spelling of “Tokyo” does not match its pronunciation. Tokyo is the English spelling, not Toukyou. If Tokyo is read in Japanese, it is “tokyo.” Koban is pronounced with two sounds “ko” and “ban” in English, but in Japanese it is pronounced with four sounds ko.u.ba.nn. In English, the sound of the alphabet changes depending on the word, for example, the “a” in “take” and “talk.” Therefore, it is not strange to pronounce “ko” as “kou.” In Japanese, “ban” has not one but two sounds, “ba” and “nn.” In other words, if written as pronounced, it would be spelled “koubann.” This confusion is also seen in people’s names. The word “大野” is “oono” when typed as it is pronounced on a computer, but there are many people who write “Ono” or “Ohno.” The source of the confusion is the inclusion of the spelling of English notation dictated by the spelling method of alphabet. Hiragana Times spells out a part of articles in alphabetized words according to its pronounciation in Japanese.