We recently picked up a steam cleaner. Not terribly exciting, but when I was unboxing it, I noticed the kanji 左 on one of the pieces of styrofoam packing. I checked on the other two and, sure enough, found 右 and 上. This was my first instance of actually being able to use what I knew.
Yesterday I saw that 歩 was used in a common urinal sign, and found that amusing, so I had to look up images of it. These connections to the real world make it much easier to cement the images in my mind. Might it be useful to include “seen in the real world” as part of the Context Sentences in the lessons?
I think that’s probably Chinese, because the kanji 步, while it does exist in Japanese, and means the same thing as 歩, it’s a jinmeiyou kanji (in the list of kanji allowed in people’s names), and not one of the kanji taught in school.
But it does go to show that in some cases you’ll be able to recognize things in Chinese as well as Japanese.
