[Nyororin]

I`m glad they`re adding more. What this ends up meaning is that they are used in the newspaper... Not that they`re somehow added to the number that people need to know to survive. Almost all those added are kanji in completely normal use, that are very familiar. However, the newspaper is limited to those in the set, so they end up writing them phonetically. It seems really silly a lot of the time when the kanji aren`t exactly obscure.

I think that the comments on there are totally losing the point. It`s more for the newspaper and public media than anything else. There is no "limiting" of people`s ability to express things, and there is also not going to be any forcing of people to suddenly learn the ones added to the list. (Chances are, everybody already knows them anyway...) Most of those that would fall in the level covered in school are ones that kids are already going to be familiar with at that level anyway.

The kanji aren`t new - they just weren`t on the standard newspaper list.

Some of the new ones being added include 俺 (おれ - one of the most common pronouns) and 凄 (used constantly in 凄い). There are TONS on there that really should have been on the list because of their widespread usage. Instead of thinking of it as something "new" - it`s more like a tweak.