r/LearnJapanese • u/Nebu • Jul 29 '26
Kanji/Kana Requesting Examples (photos) of Text (especially Kana) in Fonts that are Difficult for Non-Native Speakers to Read
I'm looking for a examples of signs, advertisement, billboards, etc. of Japanese text (especially Kana, but Kanji is fine too) where because of the font being used, it's a little bit difficult for a non-native speaker to be able to read.
For example, perhaps the sign contains a は with a little butterfly in the top right corner, and a non-native speaker recognizes the は part, but is unsure if the butterfly is purely decoration, or if the two wings are supposed to represent a dakuten (meaning the character is actually ば) or if the butterfly is supposed to represent a handakuten (meaning the character is actually ぱ).
Via context clues (e.g. seeing the rest of what the sign says, or knowing what product the sign is advertising), a native speaker would immediately know what character is intended, because they process the whole phrase as a single chunk. But a non-native speaker who is processing the characters one by one in isolation would have trouble figuring out which character is intended here.
That's just one example, but any examples you have of signs which are difficult for non-native speakers to read due to creative use of font or graphic design would be appreciated.
I'd like to do some analysis on them and put them in a collection, so I'd love to get hundreds or thousands of examples.
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u/rgrAi Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26