Strict or lazy writing possible with Japanese?

Question:

I'm learning how to write Hiragana (and eventually, Katakana and Kanji), and I was questioning wether I actually have to do all the fancy curves and marks that characters have.

For example, the Hiragana character "ko" is こ, however, can that be written as basically two straight lines? Such as = ? Another would be "ke" which is け, but could the curved "t" looking mark be written, basically as a straight t with no curve?

Answer:

Japanese is a language where every line matters, and even writing a line too short or too long can change the meaning of a character. With hiragana and katakana it's not quite as bad as with kanji (where the only distinguishing feature between two complex kanji can be a single little stroke in the middle of the character), but the shapes and writing them carefully are still important. Especially at this stage in your studies, where you are just learning to writing hiragana, you should strive to write the characters as perfectly as possible every time. Maybe someday in the future, after you have studied and mastered the right way to write characters, you can figure out some shortcuts or "lazy" ways to write characters that don't screw up the appearance enough to make them hard to read. But for now it's better to just take the extra time or make the extra effort to write it the proper, non-lazy way.