Hi friends.
I’m a level 10 Wanikani-er. My 12-year-old just introduced me to the game “Hanabi”. I notice the cards have kanji on them… one of those appears to be 天 (Heaven), and one kind of looks like 雨 (Rain), although the small strokes are pointed in different directions. The remaining four kanji are entirely indecipherable to me but I’m very curious what they mean.
Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
Do you have a picture?
Do you mean… the title? 花火?
I’ve played the card game before, but I don’t remember there being kanji. What edition do you use? Do you have pictures?
Edit: Oh, I think I found the box of the edition you’re using. It’s different from the one I know:
I’m seeing:
blue card 魚
red card 夢
yellow card 龍
white card 雨
green card 天
mixed card 虎(? the resolution in the picture was kind of bad so I’m guessing by the strokes I am seeing)
Seem like just random characters they added, they don’t even have much to do with the colours or with fireworks… I think.
Oh, is this a western-made game with a Japanese aesthetic?
飛？ ten characters spam filter
I don’t think so, they look nothing alike and it doesn’t match the pattern of the other ones being random, basic words
Yeah, it is
It does look like 虎
This is just an alternative form of 雨: 雨 - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
I don’t recall ever encountering it in Japanese however. The strokes of 天 look weird too, I feel like they went for stylish over accurate.
Also the French version I played a while ago doesn’t have these characters, instead using abstract symbols:
Edit: oh actually this is the version I played, with random icons:
Yeah, it’s possible they just aren’t that familiar with the kanji as they’re used in Japan. There is a lot of variation possible within Japanese kanji, but if you don’t know the kanji well, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between stylish differences used in Japan and alternative forms used in other countries or in the past.
Thinking about it some more it’s really a wasted opportunity to pick some equally distinct characters that would at least somewhat match the colors:
shouldn’t 日 be a candidate for red, not yellow?
I tend to associate the sun with yellow myself. Cultural, perhaps?
That’s my understanding: I am under the impression that the prototypical color of the sun is red in Japan
Yeah, it’s common to see Japanese kids draw the sun as red, which I don’t think is that common in the west.
I guess the flag should have clued me in…
Fun fact! They see tigers as yellow and black instead of orange and black too. I think that was the weirder ones along with the sun being red vs yellow.
This is just the best community ever.
Thank you for all your responses.
I guess it was naive of me to think that the game creators would be thoughtful about the kanji on the card designs… but yes, that was basically the question I was trying to answer, and it seems like the answer is, They didn’t know Japanese and were not thoughtful about it, and they seem kind of random and who knows how or why they were chosen?
Again I’m only on level 10 Wanikani myself so of the five you folks graciously and generously identified (夢, 天, 雨, 魚, 龍), I recognize only 天 and 雨 (although again the strokes on the card are pointing in the wrong directions so I wasnt even sure it wasnt some similar kanji I hadn’t met yet) and same with 魚, the font makes it look not quite like itself.
But the other two I don’t know at all.
Perhaps rising sun of the land (though I visualize setting sun better). It’s also on the flag.
Don’t western weekdays have colors associated?
Not that I’m aware of! But that doesn’t mean it isn’t so.
