Character and font sets for Japanese

[soichi]

HI.  I am not so used to setting Emacs, so please be advised.

Right now I am trying to use org-mode but have encountered a problem in putting 
entries in Japanese.  When typing in spreadsheet in this language, the cells 
are deformed and do not align properly.  
I have asked this question in Org-mode ML, then received an answer like,

"When table alignment fails, it usually has to do with character sets where 
some characters have non-integer width. Org will deal correctly with characters 
that are one or two or three ASCII characters wide, but not with characters 
that are, for example, 1.5 ASCII characters wide. To make table alignment work 
you need to switch to a different character set."

So, the problem comes down to setting character sets.  But I am not even sure 
the concepts of "character set", "coding", and "font".  This seems very 
important for myself to keep using Emacs from now on.

Currently, I have set 

;;----------------------------------------
(set-default-font "Inconsolata-11")
(set-face-font 'variable-pitch "Inconsolata-11")
(set-fontset-font (frame-parameter nil 'font)
                  'japanese-jisx0208
                  '("VL Gothic" . "unicode-bmp"))
;;----------------------------------------

I have simply copied this from a site, so I do not really understand which does 
what ...

                  'japanese-jisx0208

Is this the character set?  Looks like it.

How can I set 

"...one or two or three ASCII characters wide"

?

Thanks in advance.

soichi

P.S. If there is a good book or site that describes the information I'm looking 
for, please let me know.