If you wish to get used to hieroglyphs on pieces shogi load and play with the program "Shogi Variants" (http://trout.customer.netspace.net.au/). Here many variants shogi with rules are presented. The program allows to see moves of the chosen piece or what fields are under attack of pieces (white and/or black).
It's very nice programm for 1st viewing shogi.
This link was in "Shogi variant" on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi_variant