O.k., I'm starting to see the light on this.
Brion L. VIBBER wrote:
I'm not a real stickler on this point; as I say, I could be convinced. I'm just saying that it strikes me as fairly odd to put Kana or Kanji character sets into other languages, except in some very special cases.
What other special case could there be than "something originating in culture X, here's its real name in the language of X in case you can read X and want to look up more information or, heck, are just curious".
Oh, the special cases I had in mind were articles _about_ kana or kanji, or in cases where the kana or kanji are likely to be well-known in a certain context.
I don't know much about 'anime', for example, but I imagine that fans of anime are familiar with the kana for 'a ni me'. New people interested in that area may have seen those kana around but not yet grasped what they mean. So they'd be excited to find out by readin our 'a ni me' article.
That's different from just sticking a kanji in after someone's name.
But, now I'm starting to see the light. So long as this is just presented as parenthetical information, there's no harm and it could be very useful. Take the Sushi article as an example. Someone could use it to become familiar with the kanji for different things like nigirisushi, and then have more fun the next time at a Japanese restaurant.
Boku wa nihongo no gakusei. De mo watashi no nihongo joozu de wa arimasen. "I am a Japanese language student. But, my Japanese language is not proficient."
So consier me totally converted on this point.
(However, my Konquerer browser does not render these characters at all.)
--Jimbo