> Japanese doesn’t have italics or capital letters
It does, however, have katakana -- which is sometimes used in a similar fashion.
It does, however, have katakana -- which is sometimes used in a similar fashion.
Others have also pointed out the dots which are quite common in formally printed materials. In emails and such, I see people use the 「」 quotation bracings as emphasis from time to time.
And the usage of katakana in the way the parent describes isn’t “tiring.” It follows almost the exact same pattern as words are italicized in English, where a word or phrase is represented differently from the surrounding text. Less common/standardized, but not tiring.
EDIT:
My bad on the bouten/dakuten confusion. Apologies.
Their point about katakana was also correct - normally a word is either written in katakana or it isn't, regardless of emphasis. Using katakana for emphasis happens but it's not common, and would get tiresome very quickly.
https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/圏点
As for katakana, it really does depend. For common or short words, people usually don't have a problem, but if you throw a whole katakana sentence at a Japanese person they will often stumble and reading speed noticably decreases.