What you said probably makes some of the most sense to me. I agree that the overuse of kanji without much kana usage or punctuation usage can be blocky and difficult to scan through.

At the same time, however, it seems like what I read about trying to read something in Japanese and coming across a multitude of words in kana that sound the same or appear similarly to other words in kana when kanji could have put what's being read into a better contextual framework, would seem like an issue as well.

My reading ability in Japanese isn't advanced by any means so I can't say one way or another, but I have read several places that too much kana use can be confusing due to the reason I mentioned. So it makes sense that kana use for specific and non-mistakable words (given context of the sentence as well) would seem like a likely choice for the reasons you described.

In Japan the overuse of kanji and using them for words that aren't usually written in kanji is common among middle‐school children. Presumably because they are learning a lot of kanji and want to use them, and also like to show how much they know.

As they mature the habit drops off and they start to use kanji in more normal proportions.

Most Japanese people find that all‐kana text and excessively kanjified text are about equally annoying and difficult to read.

john555 Wrote:I was told by my teacher that I had used "too many" kanji in this short essay I wrote and that Japanese people find it "hard to read" a paragraph if it has "too many" kanji. For example, I used the kanji for kutsu (shoe) 靴 and she seemed to be suggesting that it should be written with kana but she admitted at the same time that many Japanese people do write it with kanji.

I think she got pissed at me because I reacted skeptically when she said Japanese people find a paragraph with "too many" kanji hard to read...I said something like, "that's not what I read. I've read that studies show that the more kana are used in a passage the slower a Japanese adult reads" (I read this in a book about Asian writing systems). I guess I shouldn't have said that. I forgot that she's supposed to be the expert, being a native Japanese.

She also claimed that a paragraph with "too many kanji" looks "messy" to a Japanese person. I was going to say "you're kidding me, right"? but didn't, as there are still several more sessions of this class left.

I know I find Kanji harder to read than Kana . Wouldn't get into an argument with a native about what she finds or doesn't find hard to read though.