IMG_5393.jpg
Kobe 4 Nov 2007
The type of Japanese script in this photo is called kanji. Kanji are not phonetic (hiragana, shown in an earlier photo, are phonetic -- I believe each symbol in it is a syllable). Most proper names (like the names of people) are written in kanji. The kanji are based on Chinese characters. However (as I understand it), the two written languages have evolved separately over time (the hundreds of years since the Chinese writing was introduced into Japan), so now a specific kanji is often somewhat different from the corresponding Chinese character it was originally based on (I think the Chinese name for these characters may be something like hanji).
(IMG_5393.JPG)
