Where to find nice stylish Unicode fonts that contain the whole Japanese set?

[blanka]

For a design job with Japanese text, I want to go beyond the basic Osaka font in OSX for layout. But it is very hard to find fonts that are in UTF-8/Unicode and that contain Katakana, Hiragana AND Kanji.
It is easy to find designfonts just for Katakana and Hiragana, but never with all the Kanji symbols. Please help me with useful download/buy domains.
Especially interested in sans-serif fonts. Lightweight and rounded.

I found an Epson Windows TTF set free of charge, but it has issues on OSX, probably because of the naming of the fonts. It comes in 8 flavours, but all are seen as the same font by OSX due to Japanese characters in the font names. Is there a way to fix this font for OSX use?
http://www.epson.jp/download2/printer/driver/win/page/ttf30.htm

 

[Snowshiro]

This might sound ridiculously obvious, but much like you can buy those cheap 'royalty free' CDs with hundreds of English fonts on them, they have the same kind of thing in Japan.

If you're desperate, I could probably purchase some for you, but you're probably better off ordering some from amazon.co.jp

Here's an example of one that has several hundred Japanese fonts (plus several thousand English).

http://www.amazon.co.jp/DynaFont-TypeMuseum-3710-TrueType-Windows/dp/B0082IZUFC/ref=pd_cp_sw_1

 

[blanka]

That link does not convince me of two important features I need:
- The fonts should be UTF-8 full set mapped (I know plenty of sites with free designfonts in katakana and hiragana, but they are all ancient TTF 256 character ASCII fonts).
- The fonts should work on MAC. Many large-set windows TTF fonts have troubles with MAC. OpenType is probably the kind I need.

 

[MechaSpanky]

blanka,

I believe that OS X ships with other Japanese fonts besides just Osaka. If you turn on Japanese in the System Preferences, you should be able to use more than just the Osaka font (unless you have deactivated them or you have removed them or moved them). I have Japanese active on my computer and I have several font choices available to choose from besides just Osaka (and I don't have any Japanese fonts other than the ones that came with OS X). I believe that they also contain all the characters (katakana, hiragana, and kanji). There are a few different styles, including a few formal looking font faces and a few casual looking fonts as well.


Good luck,
Mecha

 

[blanka]

They are too limited. I need one with rounded stroke ends, where the "sans serif" ones on Mac also have tiny serifs at the end.
Also looking for a rounded one with more cubist look, and a uber-fat Kana version where the strokes are so thick and rounded, they overlap eachother.

 

[MechaSpanky]

This site has a lot of different Japanese fonts for sale but it is all in Japanese. If you can read Japanese you'll be fine.
http://www.typebank.co.jp/
This link will get you to the fonts section.
http://www.typebank.co.jp/fonts/

 

[Snowshiro]

That link does not convince me of two important features I need:
- The fonts should be UTF-8 full set mapped (I know plenty of sites with free designfonts in katakana and hiragana, but they are all ancient TTF 256 character ASCII fonts).

The first item in the list in the product information (従来の日本語フォント262書体) is the entry for full Japanese typefaces. So, essentially you're getting a couple of hundred new fonts plus change. The rest are a mixture of European, kana and arty fonts you could just discard, or keep any that look good.

This is about the only way I know of to get hold of a large number of properly licensed Japanese fonts without buying them individually.

- The fonts should work on MAC. Many large-set windows TTF fonts have troubles with MAC. OpenType is probably the kind I need.

I can't vouch for that. The product information says "Windows". That said, my local branch of Bic Camera (Japanese electronics retailer) has a number of similar font boxed sets in their Mac software section. I bought one myself a few years ago. I'm sure you could probably find them on amazon and elsewhere.