JoshuaInNippon writes "Those who have studied Japanese know how
imposing kanji, or Chinese characters, can be in learning the
language. There is an official list of 1,945 characters that one
is expected to understand to graduate from a Japanese high
school or be considered fluent. For the first time in 29 years,
that list is set to change — increasing by nearly 10% to 2,136
characters. 196 are being added, and five deleted. The added
characters are ones believed to be found commonly in life use,
but are considered to be harder to write by hand and therefore
overlooked in previous editions of the official list. Japanese
officials seem to have recognized that with the advent and
spread of computers in daily life, writing in Japanese has
simplified dramatically. Changing the phonetic spelling of a
word to its correct kanji only requires a couple of presses of a
button, rather than memorizing an elaborate series of brush
strokes. At the same time, the barrage of words that people see
has increased, thereby increa