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When I'm not sure about the spelling of an English word, I look it up in a dictionary. This works, because all English dictionaries give largely the same spellings and everybody writes English the same way. When there are variants, such as "color" and "colour" or "center" and "centre", it turns out that one spelling is used in some places and the other elsewhere. So we have the idea taht there's basically just one correct way to spell a word.
Things don't work like that in Japan. Most words may be spelt two ways, in kana or in kanji. Many words can be written in three o more ways using different kanji. It all depends on your opinion or even in your mood. It is not strange in a novel for the same word to be written in kanji here and in kana there.
And the dictionary doesn't help at all. Most dictionaries won't mention that words like BALA バラ or LOOSOKU ロウソク are usually written in kana, but you'll find there the kanji for them, which most Japanese don't know. (That's why the Japanese buy dictionaries, to learn rare kanji for rare words.)
As a rule of thumb, you should use kanji for a word only if you know the kanji well and when you expect your reader to know too. This is what the Japanese do.
Romaji is a MessHow to Read Japanese Mangalearning kanji from manga
Copyright (c) 2003-2008
Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/manga/tresalfabetos.en.html
Last revised: 2008-10-08