I know that the hardest part for me when coming up with new characters is the name. I can probably safely assume that others have that problem too, so I'll put up some name generators.
D&D name generator http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20010208b
Pretty useful one for many different cultures http://www.behindthename.com/random/
Japanese Name Generator http://www.geocities.com/phillipriley/ngjap.html