What I think would be much simpler:
- Please download a font which actually supports kanjis (such as MingLiu), there must be plenty out there.
- In Blender, make square planes - I suggest you make one atop of each button. UV-unwrapping is trivial.
- In your favorite image processing software, write the kanji using the downloaded font. It can be made as simply as a Copy/Paste of said kanjis from the
wikia page. Have the kanji white on black background on a square image.
- Go back to Blender, in the material of your square planes, map it with the appropriate kanji texture. Then in you material, create a material which has the reflective properties you desire for your kanjis. Once you have that, add a Mix shader node combined with a Transparent shader node. Use your kanji texture as the Fac input to the Mix shader.
I think that's the best way to go. The kanjis may be flat, but you have the projected shadow. If you want 3d effects on the kanjis, then you may have to do the cut out and extrude by hand (with the help of "set image as background" using top view), more complicated but doable. I have not tried to get such 3d effect by applying a solidify modifier to the 2d with transparency - I'm curious about what that would yield though.
Still, in any case: Kanji font >>> bitmap
