Japanese fonts

[tristan]

Hey all,

I was just wondering if you had additional Japanese fonts for Mac OS. I've been searching all over for them, but I haven't had any luck. A handwritten style would be very nice. I just have 3 boring ones that came with the US version of OS X.

Thanks

[Psy]

A majority of the really good kanji fonts out there are quite expensive, due in no small part to the number of characters which have to be drawn to make them. However, if you look hard enough there are some cool freebies to be found...

First and foremost, there's the immortal みかちゃん:

(first respect the effort!)
http://www001.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mikachan/mak01.jpg
http://www001.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mikachan/

There are also a good few nice fonts to be found here:
http://www.forest.impress.co.jp/lib/offc/print/font/

There are also some nice Chinese ones for OSX, and since they usually work with Japanese text you can try installing them.

... and have you ever seen the Windows XP Japanese fonts? If not, don't complain about the OSX ones until you have.

[tristan]

Hey thanks! That's a really good start.

Yeah I know what you mean about XP's fonts. Now Vista on the other hand... I'm living in Japan this semester and was playing around on my host sister's computer when I noticed there was just an ungodly amount of awesome fonts in the new Office suite. That's kinda what kickstarted my interest. Haha

Thanks again

[tristan]

Oh, one more thing.

How do you write furigana on a mac? Just curious...

[Psy]

I know of no way out-of-the-box to do that, however there are programs like OpenOffice and tate which allow you to write furigana.

[schenkus]

If you want something looking "handwritten", there is a font "nagayama"
that is free for personal use.

I don't think it would make a good "standard" font, but I think it
really looks great.

You can download it from this website (the link for the font
is close to the bottom of the page):
http://www.shodo.it/nihongo-nagayama-font.html

[Psy]

Beautiful! Thanks for that one, schenkus!