Kanji stroke type (not stroke order) My former teacher made us really pay attention to kana stroke order _and_ stroke types (and ). Yet when it came to kanji she only made us study the stroke order. I've noticed that other people also disregard kanji stroke type. Why is that? Is it because of the sheer amount of information? (It's easy to remember a few kana stroke types while the same does not hold true to kanji.) What do natives have to say about this?

I think that in elementary school stroke type (at least ) is definitely regarded an important part of learning kanji.

For instance, the kanji is a first-year character and the hook on the last stroke is an important part. I think that most elementary schools would take marks off (i.e. not but ) for omitting the hook in a test.

(The hook is even part of fonts, which often don't detail or .)

When written in pen or pencil, and are much harder to identify and produce and are often neglected.

In any case, stroke type is definitely taught in elementary school. I don't know why your teacher chose not to teach you stroke type. One reason may be that she assumes you'll be sensitive enough to stroke type once she showed you how important it was (for kana).

If you feel you need more practice, I can highly recommend practice books (like this one) for school children for developing nice handwriting. (Many foreigners I've seen try to imitate a font...)