The reason was to provide a consistent look across devices. Previously they used a long font stack with various fonts you might have installed (including Noto Sans delivered via Google Fonts), now it’s just self-hosted Noto Sans.
Is there a ttf file of this readily available? It looks phenomenal. I’d love to add it to Flaming Durtles.
Wow, I love that last font! It looks like a perfect happy medium between the nearly-illegible (but beautiful) handwritten script and the kind of “too perfect” computer fonts like Noto Sans JP. (“too perfect” but also kind of essential for learning, I’m not dunking on easily legible kanji at all 
)
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300 weight was definitely too thin. I don’t use windows so I’ve already been on noto sans for a long time and the change was immediately noticeable to me. Now that it’s 400 weight it looks normal again.
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Wow no wonder I’m always thrown off when I go to learn how to write kanji, Noto Sans is so blocky.
I don’t think you need to make a distinction, and to be honest I also don’t understand the complaint either. I don’t see how it affects accessibility. The new font isn’t some cryptic calligraphy. My font hasn’t changed so I’d be interested to see someone post the old one.
People are making it sound like putting text in bold makes it illegible.
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UD Digi Kyokasho font is actually offered by Microsoft but others offer it too (Adobe for example). If you use Windows 10/11 or Microsoft Office, you probably have it already. It’s usually installed with the JP language pack and should be in the C:\Windows\Fonts folder. Not sure where Mac stores fonts though.
You can read about the font on Microsoft’s website:
UD Digi Kyokasho font family - Typography | Microsoft Learn
This is the description from Morisawa’s website:
UD Digital Kyokasho Regular | Fonts Specimen | MORISAWA Fonts | Morisawa Inc.
UD Digital Kyokasho is a universal design typeface for ICT-based educational materials, such as digital textbooks. It is designed to emulate handwriting with a pencil or felt pen, focusing on hand movement. While keeping the direction of the axis and the shape of dots and the harai (sweep) ending, its strokes have less contrast, conscious of the people with low vision and dyslexia. The structure is more close to the penmanship style for textbooks instead of the conventional educational letterforms based on the national guidelines.
If you can’t find it, let me know. I’ll zip up the font files for you.
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I wanted to add it to Flaming Durtles since I do 99% of WK activities on my phone.
yeah im not saying its not uncommon, thats a miscommunication on my part, im just saying it looks funny to me as it looks all squished and thick compared to the day before. ridiculous was being used in a casual way not an actual serious way lol
oh no for sure, kanji can vary so much between different fonts sometimes it feels like a different language lol. and yeah 100% for me this is just a personal taste thing, im autistic so small changes are kinda uncomfortable for me, but its more so just funny to see how all the kanji look chunky now im not too bothered
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FYI - probably the most common/used font in Japan. I am required to use it in a lot the documents I have to work with. Meiryo is also up there.
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Yeah. How ever did I (and any as old or older than me) survive the old days? My schooling was at time when pretty much everything was handwritten. There were as many different “fonts” as there were people doing the writing.
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It can feel like that to a new learner of the language. But it is no different to Japanese people than writing in English in different fonts is for native speakers/readers of English.
I have lived in Japan for quite a few years now and I can assure you that the country is not using one standard font everywhere. The more experience you have with seeing different ones the easier it gets, And they way to get that experience is by seeing different ones. Throw in handwritten text (like the menu at most every small restaurant I go to where there are no paper menus, just the daily menu written on the backboard) and it gets even more varied. Even the ones that do have paper menus at the table are photocopies of a handwritten page.
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Aw, I like Mincho! I consider it to be sort of the Garamond of Japanese fonts. I use Yu Mincho on my Anki cards (along with Garamond for English text, haha) 
Regarding the topic as a whole, I found that my ability to read Japanese outside of WK improved a lot when I installed the jitai script and started practicing my reviews in different fonts. It can kind of go against your instincts a bit to make your reviews harder for yourself for no reason, but I think in this case, the pain is worth it, because as many people here have said, you will encounter many hard to read fonts/handwriting styles in real life (and in media!), so learning how to read kanji in different font styles is actually an incredibly important skill.
If the font change has made your reviews noticeably harder for you, it might actually turn out to be a good thing in the long run that you got some practice with a different font! It’ll help you learn how to abstract the shapes of the radicals instead of recognizing the kanji as one solid block in one specific font.
I honestly think it’d be great if WaniKani could have native support for the jitai script’s function someday (it could be opt-in instead of opt-out), though I’m sure it’d be a pain to deal with font licenses. But even having just a few common fonts mixed together would help, I think.
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Then maybe what you want is this font:
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Everything was handwritten except for your books, which till this day most of them choose one font and stick with it for a reason.
Yes, within the context of a single book, the font tended to be the same throughout. But I did use and read a lot more than one book (in my high school days I generally ready a couple of novels per week), and not every book used the same font. I also expect that a using a single font in a book had a lot to do with easing the printing and production process as well.
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Exactly. In this case wanikani is equivalent to one book.
And accessibility wise it actually would have made more sense, considering it’s a digital learning how to read app, if they implemented a font rendering feature like the one readings apps have like kindle libby etc. even something as basic as the Lingodeer one would have been a great improvement
Just change the script style to font style. It’s all very basic stuff UI and UX wise.
True. But even when this ceased to be a problem, there’s a standard for which fonts you can use for a thesis, what size they should be as well as the lines and paragraphs margin.
In a manner of speaker, yes. A lot more fluid and less well defined (in terms of a set of static pages bound in a fixed sequence between a front and back cover) than a book, being a platform as opposed to be being a book. Regardless, in the context of the analogy at hand, WK is as of this moment, using a single font throughout. It is a different font than it was in a previous release (just as a new printing of a text book often used a newer font than older/original printings).
Yes, totally agree. Would be a nice to have feature for sure. I still read a lot of novels (but not as many as I did back then now that I have 24 hour TV, internet, games on my PC, phone and console, WK forums and all sorts of other distractions) but mostly read them on my phone and I often do change the font to one that I like more. Not that the default is unreadable in any way, but given the choice, why not choose what you like. In fact, the settings I change that do impact (comfort of) readability for me is background/foreground colour combos and contrast. Suffering from some partial colour blindness, certain combos are harder to read and cause more eye strain for me. For my own personal feature wish list I would prioritize being able to adjust these over being able to change the font.
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Considering the fact you’ve replied to a comment that commented on a discussion that started from this, I think we came full circle ٩(^‿^)۶
To be fair Wanikani staff did make changes over the years to accommodate people with color blindness. You can see examples of the way the design used to be if you search “color blind” in the forum, I vaguely remember it mentioned in one of the huge overhauls they did years ago, that resulted in the purple background.
If the accessibility options on your phone doesn’t help you, you might want to write wanikani about it.
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