is this really japanese or what?!.....

srry im trying to decipher if this in in fact Japanese as to me the characters seem more Chinese than Japanese!

In Japanese you do not generally write western names in kanji. You can try, but nobody would recognise that as "Michael". It would be katakana: マイケル or ミカエル (depending how you pronounce it).

Writing foreign names with kanji/hanzi is done in Chinese, and 迈克尔 seems to be used in Chinese to represent Michael (source: wikipedia)

I would suggest you don't trust random tattoo websites, generally. I've seen some right howlers. (best: "Diva in Japanese" written as literally "female opera singer").