1. A character recognition apparatus for use with an information recording medium, the character recognition apparatus comprising: an imaging element structured to read a character string placed on the information recording medium and create image data of the character string; an image memory structured to store the image data; and a character segmenting unit structured to process the image data so as to segment a character constituting the character string; wherein the image data comprises a plurality of pixels, each pixel having a light intensity value; wherein the plurality of pixels are arranged in a plurality of pixel rows extending in a direction perpendicular to the character string; wherein the character segmenting unit comprises a minimum intensity curve creating unit structured to: for each pixel row, detect a minimum intensity value among the light intensity values of each pixel of the pixel row; and create a minimum intensity curve according to the minimum intensity value of each pixel row, wherein a first axis of the minimum intensity curve is a position of a pixel row and a second axis of the minimum intensity curve is the minimum intensity value detected for the pixel row; a character segmenting position detecting unit structured to calculate a space between the characters neighboring in the created minimum intensity curve, in order to detect a character segmenting position between the characters; and a character segmenting process unit configured to segment each character according to the detected character segmenting position between the characters.