On Jun 13, 2006, at 7:56 PM, James Moore wrote:
> There's another problem with Japanese - I've got a friend who's  
> been dealing
> with some issues around the fact that Japanese apparently innovates  
> new
> characters on a regular basis, and everyone is expected to use the new
> characters.  (I believe this is called gaiji).  The concept of a fixed
> character set apparently just isn't a good idea to start with.
>
> [Awaiting corrections from people who actually know something about  
> this
> topic :-)...]

I have one Japanese person here who's never heard of this gaiji  
concept.  But it could be new and behind a generation gap of some  
kind.  They do sure like to add symbols where they can, though.   
Especially graphical star characters.  I see that a lot.
-Mat