Oh, and that doesn't even begin to get into the fact that you can write many words in Japanese in multiple ways: in kanji (whole words), hirigana (syllabary used for Japanese words), or katakana (syllabary used for borrowed foreign words and sound effects). For example, nekokami can be written as.... oops. I forgot, I'm not on my Mac. I don't have Japanese input on this machine. Ok, I'll post later.
But the point is, if you write everything in hirigana, you're either a child or uncultured/uneducated-- maybe all of the above.