Latham's 1998 Guide to Japanese Baseball...

Kanji Lesson # 7:
More simple kanji

Like the kanji in the first few lessons, the ones below tend to represent simple nouns (stone, well, money, rice) and concepts (other, now, fast, new). All appear quite frequently in family names.

	stone
	water well
	another, other
	now
	fast
	stand
	money, gold; also used to denote "Friday"
	crossroads
	rice plant
	new

As with most other h/b kanji, haya/baya is read with an "h" sound if it is the first of two characters in a name; with a "b" sound if it's the second.

Regarding the i kanji (which looks like a number symbol), neither it nor kami contain a "no" sound, but when the characters are put together the two-kanji name becomes "Inoue."

Though it usually means "money" or "gold," kane/kana is the symbol used on most calendars and schedules to identify "Friday." This character can also be found on the left side of many other kanji (much like all the kanji in lesson four have a tree on the left side and those in lesson five have water marks). Suzu (Lesson 3) is one such character.

Since shin means "new," it is also used to identify rookies (shinjin is the Japanese word for "new person").

Go to Lesson 8

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