1. A character recognition apparatus for use with an information recording medium, the character recognition apparatus comprising: an imaging element configured to read a character string placed on the information recording medium; an image memory configured to store image data of the character string imaged by the imaging element; and a character segmenting unit configured to process the image data so as to segment a character constituting the character string; wherein the character segmenting unit comprises; a minimum intensity curve creating unit configured to detect a minimum intensity value among light intensity values stored in a pixel row laid out in a direction perpendicular to a direction of the character string in the image data, and create a minimum intensity curve of the image data according to the minimum intensity value of each pixel row; a character segmenting position detecting unit configured 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.