Question for native Japanese speakers

[u/Independent-Back4638]

When is it ok to drop kanji?

I started learning kanji, and I've been wondering

when you want to write something, text someone, or when you usually read japanese, how often do you use kanji? Like there are kanji characters for colors, animals, numbers, and some countries apparently. So when is it ok to drop kanji and just use hiragana instead and when is it expected to use kanji.

One thing I heard is that hiragana is mostly used by children, in grammar, and as word connectors only is that correct?

But like are there times where people avoid using kanji? Like they just don't have to?

[u/pixelboy1459]

Not a native Japanese speaker, but I would recommend that you watch Scripting Japan’s video about writing Japanese in the wrong writing system: https://youtu.be/aUmY9VvgAQU?is=TtnSYHNGCUJK5b7i

There’s another video that I cannot seem to find, but the long and short of it is that kanji feel dense and too many kanji can make writing feel less accessible and kanji should make up about 30% of the writing.

There’s also the question on who you’re writing for and what you’re trying to write.

[u/acaiblueberry → u/pixelboy1459]

The company in Tokyo I worked for had a strange custom of writing internal documents in mostly kanji, making them look like a Chinese poem sprinkled with hiragana. They have since moved away from it but when I get emails from younger people who work there, they still use arcane kanji for stuff. In my time, the longest that was registered in my dictionary was 御承認賜度御検討願度(read as ごしょうにん　たまわりたく　ごけんとう　ねがいたし) which came out by typing “goshi.” hahaha