Latham's 1998 Guide to Japanese Baseball...

Kanji Lesson #1:
Very basic kanji

The kanji in this lesson are among the most basic, common and easiest to read and remember. The first five represent basic nouns (mountain, crop field, river, mouth and exit) while the others convey sizes and directions (middle, above, below, west and north).

About one fourth of the players on any given team will have at least one of these characters in their family name.

	mountain; very commonly used kanji
	crop field; used in about 1/10 of Japanese names
	river; (also see "kawa" in lesson 5)
	mouth
	exit / sunrise
	middle / central / medium; used by Chunichi Dragons
	upper / above
	under / below
	west; also used by Seibu Lions
	north

Two of the characters (chu and sei) appear in the names of the Chunichi Dragons and Seibu Lions. These and other kanji in subsequent lessons are widely used in city and train station names.

As with kanji in other lessons, you'll notice that most characters can have different pronunciations when put in different combinations.

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