Hey everyone. I recently decided to give Android another go, getting a barebones Nexus S, purchased in the United States, so I knew it would be running the latest Android update. Unfortunately I'm having trouble viewing Japanese text. The best way to explain my issue is on this Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification

About halfway down the page is a chart showing characters and their variations between languages. If you run a browser like Chrome that does not support Han unification, you'll see five of the same characters in a row, all defaulting to Chinese. If you run a browser like Firefox, you'll see five different characters, some very different from each other.

Needless to say I'm now running Firefox on my PC when looking at Japanese characters, however this option doesn't work on Android since it's a system level issue. I've tried multiple browsers, but nothing has worked, and certain apps including AnkiDroid, which rely on system level fonts, display the characters incorrectly as well, defaulting to Chinese instead of Japanese.

So my question is, has anybody found a solution to this issue? I've looked all over and find explanations but no answers. A few forums have suggested to root the phone, which is fine, but with no details as to what to do after that.

Thanks for reading!

The only solution at the moment I think is to root your phone. There are lots of guides if you search for 'How to root a (name of phone model)'.

Thanks for the response, but I suppose I should have been more specific. I'm aware of how to actually root the phone, what I haven't been able to find is what to do after that. What font or fonts do I need? Should I be replacing fonts or just adding to them? Etc.

Look for "DroidSansJapanese.ttf", available from the Google git. You don't need to replace anything, just add it to the font directory.
Some people seem to prefer MTLmr3m.ttf and MTLc3m.ttf instead, but I haven't tried them.

Thanks very much for the help!

So did replacing the font fix the issue?

I'm curious because it seems this is a webkit rendering bug, which affects both Chrome and Android browsers. You may be able to force all text to be rendered correctly as Chinese or Japanese, but if like me you need to view both, then you're screwed

Btw, it was first reported in 2008 and keeps getting pushed back, so don't expect it to get fixed anytime soon.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=2685
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=2685

If it's just an AnkiDroid issue and you don't feel like rooting, then update to beta 0.7 and use the new custom font feature.

Yeah, I find Google's treatment of Japanese on non-Japanese-manufactured handsets to be highly annoying. I wouldn't hold my breath on a fix, either. But if you don't feel like rooting, and you just need an AnkiDroid fix, there is one.