Latham's 1998 Guide to Japanese Baseball...

Kanji Lesson #4:
Tree kanji

Though we have already seen a a few tree kanji already (moto, hon, ki), the characters from this lesson all share a single trait--on the left side, they all contain a tree symbol. Not surprisingly, most have a botanic meaning.

	forest; read hayashi if kanji is first character in name
	village
	cedar
	pine tree
	oak
	beside; also appears in Yokohama city
	Podocarp; (Chinese black pine)
	willow
	bridge; usually read as hashi
	forest

As with hoshi (Lesson 3), hayashi/bayashi and hashi/bashi are usually pronounced with an "h" sound if they are the first character in a name; with a "b" sound if they are the second.

Many of these characters are also used for city names, such as Yokohama, Morioka and Hamamatsu.

Go to Lesson 5

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