[Ah, right, he figured you weren't Japanese - that's why he introduced himself first name-last name instead of the order he's used to.]

Japanese uses a few different alphabets; kanji is one of them. They're symbols that mean different things depending on how they're used. So my surname has two kanji; one pronounced "kuro", which is "black", and "-saki", which is "flower". The one in my first name is read differently depending on if it's a word or a name, so in my name it's "Shun", but in normal usage it's read "hayabusa", which is "falcon".

[So in other words, yes, Shun does mean something. It means he's a bird nerd.]