These look like base64 to me, with the exception of the last one which has the ~, that could indicate a “space” between two different valid base64 strings.
… But base64 decoding them doesn’t lead me to any obvious meaning. Tried decoding in UTF-8, shift-jis, not sure what else might make sense.
Aye, we already thought of that. We even tried to covert it to binary and look for pictures.
Something something the number four? 死＝shi＝四
If you want to get to heaven, begin from 4
１) ちちこたしわぬわりやおふふあそいきしやふはにえしせこらままもられ
２) こえぬこにたせきとふわおくし
３) わわりこふおよき
４) しわふあぬえそせたちてしはわこへにりやのこぬはきれち
4 Does start with し
Just in case we were making this too hard (not likely, but…) I tried
try_four_words(“AABQD010L76223CEGD72FI5DPBOJJMO+,B51BIQPGS206HD,00LB269G,D02315CPQAWDF0B~IL7KB1FG+A”);
and
try_four_words(“AABQD010L76223CEGD72FI5DPBOJJMO+,B51BIQPGS206HD,00LB269G,D02315CPQAWDF0B~IL7KB1FG+A”.toLowerCase());
not it.
The strings, sorted:
+00122235677aabbcdddefgijjlmoopq
01256bbdghipqs
00269bgl
+00112357aabbcddffgiklpqw~
and all together
++00000001111222222335556667779aaaabbbbbbbccddddddefffgggghiiijjklllmoopppqqqsw~
ctmf.exe has stopped working
# kill -9 ctmf
# _
Based on unequal letter frequencies, I threw them into a simple substitution cipher solver one by one. Nothing good.
Because of all the 4s and April being important and starting from ‘death’, I tried “Your Lie In April” , “Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso”, and “四月は君の嘘”.
Nuttin’. Big fat zero.
While we’re at it: Tengoku e no Kaidan, also not it.
Is… Is this progress?! I’m so proud of you all ;_; I forgot what this feels like since we’ve been swimming in circles for the last week 
(the feeling of progress that is, not the feeling of pride! :') )
ファイト！
This is insane. Progress, finally!!!
I’ve never been happier about riddles in my life
I think the kanji was just a clue to get us the date of the Tofugu blog post containing the next clues.
Ok, I feel like we’ve gone back into overthinking mode. I actually quite liked the solution to the first clue - it’s clever, and elegant, and I really wish I’d thought of it myself. Getting bogged down into keyboard encoding, or base64 encryption… it feels messy.
Though, I do find it curious that both of the symbols which appear in the codes that aren’t alphanumeric are… for want of a better word, “upper-case” symbols. Which is to say, why + and ~ rather than = and `? (Or I guess, looking at the Japanese keyboard maps, ; and ^?)
That might be the order on how to enter the 4 keywords
I do agree. The solution for the first clue is simple and clean and I don’t know how we didn’t see it before. I too checked the number of strokes but didn’t see the date 
The + and ~ appear when you press down shift, is that important maybe?
Yea I saw the stroke numbers and tried doing math with them lol
Agreed.
Agreed.
SHIFT? IS IT SHIFT-JIS AGAIN? 
Maybe it’s connected to the japanese keyboards? What happens when you press shift on it? 
It has to be a flip phone…