Japanese (especially Kanji) draw heavily from Chinese anyway, so it's not wrong to use those fonts either. You can try using MS Mincho, but ideally for websites you might want to go with Unicode -- its a more potable method.
Older OS like Win98 may need an optional download in order to read Japanese text on the web browser. W2K and XP comes with the necessary software to do so out-of-box, so they don't need to download.
Also, MS provides the Input Method Editor (IME) for people to write Japanese text, which is normally what I used to write. As long as I stick with MS products, I'm fairly sure that the majority of the people out there can read what I write.
However, the best way to do it might be as you have -- write them as an image file and link to them as pics. That way, regardless of whether they are using W98 or W2K they would be able to read your text.
if he goes with shiftjis or unicode anyoen with a internet explorere or netscape cna easily read it. tha tis why i asked him what os he has. if it is cxp it;s very easy to do as Id id in the smaple above. takes secodns and yone can read it.