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heres a katakana chart if your comp cant read the japanese

In modern Japanese, katakana are most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages (called gairaigo). For example, "television" is written terebi (テレビ, terebi?). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names and foreign place and personal names. For example America is written アメリカ Amerika (America has its own Kanji beikoku (米国, beikoku?) meaning "rice country") and John is written ジョン (Jon).

Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia, letters used to represent sounds, for example pinpon (ピンポン, pinpon?), the "ding-dong" sound of a doorbell, would usually be written in katakana.

Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals are also commonly written in katakana.

Katakana are also often used for transcription of Japanese company names (not always). For example Suzuki is written スズキ, and Toyota is written トヨタ. Katakana are also used for emphasis, especially on signs, advertisements, and hoardings. For example, it is common to see ココ koko (here), ゴミ gomi (trash) or メガネ megane (glasses), and words to be emphasized in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana.

Pre-World War II official documents mix katakana and kanji in the same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana and particles such as wa or o.

Katakana were also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988 and before the introduction of multibyte characters in computer systems in the 1980s. Most computers used Katakana instead of Kanji and/or Hiragana for output.

Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese are usually written in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese dialects which are borrowed directly rather than using the Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings, are often written in katakana. Examples include

マージャン (麻將/麻雀), mājan (mahjong), from Mandarin májiàng
ウーロン茶 (烏龍茶), ūroncha (Oolong tea), from Mandarin wūlóng
チャーハン (炒飯), chāhan, (fried rice)
チャーシュー(叉焼), chāshū, from Cantonese cha siu, roast pork
シューマイ (焼売), shūmai, from Cantonese siu maai, a kind of dim sum.
The very common Chinese loanword ラーメン (rāmen) is rarely written with its kanji 拉麺.

There are rare cases where the opposite has occurred, with kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. An example of this is コーヒー (kohi), "coffee", which can be alternatively written as 珈琲. This kanji usage, although very rare, is occasionally employed by coffee manufacturers for novelty reasons.

Katakana are sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but intended to be pronounced as the original.

Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent, by foreign characters, robots etc. For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by コンニチワ (konnichiwa) instead of the more usual hiragana こんにちは (konnichi wa).

Katakana are also used to indicate the on'yomi (Chinese-derived) readings of a kanji in a kanji dictionary.

Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana. This was more common in the past, hence elderly women often have katakana names.

It is very common to write words with difficult-to-read kanji in katakana. This phenomenon is often seen with medical terminology. For example, in the word "dermatology", 皮膚科, hifuka, the second kanji, 膚, is considered difficult, and thus the word hifuka is commonly written as 皮フ科 or ヒフ科 in katakana. Similarly, difficult kanji such as 癌 gan, "cancer", are often written in katakana or hiragana.

Katakana is also used for traditional musical notations, as in the Tozan ryu of shakuhachi, and in sankyoku ensembles with koto, shamisen and shakuhachi.