[tlug] Standard, or at least most common, Japanese web fonts

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

TLUG,

I hope this isn't too tangential for the TLUG group.

I'm having a hard time nailing down what would be a good list of fonts 
to use for sites that use both Japanese and English.

Mainly the problem here is that I have no idea what are standard 
Japanese fonts that are going to be found across a wide variety of 
platforms.

There's a further wrinkle in that my web searching has turned up many 
variant names of fonts. With "MS Mincho", for example, sometimes the 
kanji name, "明朝" is used. And worse, sometimes it seems to be written 
in hex code '=EF=BC=AD=EF=BC=B3 =EF=BC=B0=E6=98=8E=E6=9C=9D'. (I think 
that's hex, isn't it?)

From what I can read of both English and Japanese sites about CSS and 
fonts, there is a fairly heavy presumption that Windows fonts will be 
used. But of course I'm looking to also be able to offer Linux users 
without proprietary fonts a reasonable viewing experience.

So I'm wondering, what fonts would one use for serif and sans-serif 
fonts for Japanese text that has the highest chance of availability 
across all platforms?

And does one write them in Kanji, romaji, or hex code?

Any advice would be much appreciated.


--
Dave M G
http://tlug.jp/mediawiki/index.php?title=User:Dave_M_G