I'm using firefox as my browser and when ever I come across Japanese characters I get a bunch of question marks. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

Using IE you can go to Control Panel > Regional and Language Options > Languages > Supplemental Language Support

Here you can download the files for East Asian Languages.

I do not know if this relates to Firefox as I do not use it. Sorry.

Further to the comments made by jephree, I believe the following applies to Firefox: -

Tools > Options > Advanced > Choose (at the bottom of the pop-up window) > Select a language to add > scroll to Japanese > click on Add and Ok your way out.

You may have to close all Firefox windows and re-open them.

Hope this works for you.

no that didn't help. i've always been able to see the caracters on website pages but the ones i can't see are when people type them in as text. I hope that could help figure it out. all i've seen in my searching is that i need some language pack from the windows XP(my OS) service pack 2. I'm kind of hoping i can get around having to get another one casue i don't have one.....

Some quick Googles:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...+characters+xp

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...ese+xp&spell=1

thnx i think it worked but now for some reason microsoft is saying that i failed the genuine software validation but it has always worked before >_<

I had tried your solution already mark, without sucess.
you can change a browser.