During my recent trip to Japan I photographed a lot of kanji in the wild. I wanted to use these signs as a learning material by posting them on this forum once I’m back home, so that the memory of Japan’s streets becomes part of my daily routine. Some of these signs I understand in full, but most of them are above my current WK level, and by photographing them I wanted to translate and analyse them later. I’ll post here whatever I’ve managed to figure out.
Note: I usually type on the phone, so I’m not going to bother with furigana formatting and spoiler tags - they are too much effort.
Note for future readers: I’m level 12 when I’m starting this thread.
窓 - まど - means window. 通路 is an aisle or a passage, and interestingly, though I haven’t learnt this word on WK, it seems straightforward to deduce its meaning: “pass-through road”.
As for 窓側 and 通路側: I haven’t studied 側 yet, but once I realised it’s pronounced がわ, I recognised it from train announcements:
お出口は左側です / お出口は右側です。
which are some of the first sentences I learned in Japanese along with ドアが閉まります.
側 seems to mean “side” and apparently it’s also the kanji spelling of そば.
This is mostly readable for WK level 6 learners with two caveats:
(1) I had to make the leap that if 前 means “front”, then 前へ means “forward”, or literally “to the front”. What about 前で? I guess it depends on the verb.
So here’s a question: what is the missing verb? Which verb would you put after 一歩前で and which verb after 一歩前へ?
進む? 動く?
And would 一歩前に also make sense on a sign?
(2) お願いします is one of the most common words on signs in Japan, even though WK teaches it relatively late.
By the way, I just saw that the primary meaning on WK is “please help me”. This is interesting: it never occured to me in Japan, but in other Asian countries (I often encountered it in Vietnam, I believe) people tend to use “help me” instead of “please” when speaking or writing in English too.
Quick (but not very interesting) story: My first trip to Japan, long ago, was with my GF at the time, and she spoke no Japanese at all. I was a bit of a beginner back then, but I could speak enough Japanese to get by.
We took the shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto, switched to some local trains to get to Nara, stayed in Nara for a few days, and then back to Kyoto from where we departed on a longer train ride to Kagoshima (very southern end of Kyushu), partly via shinkansen and partly via ‘limited express’ trains. Our return trip to Tokyo was similar, involving several long journeys via shinkansen.
On the shinkansen rides, every so often a woman would roll a cart with food and drinks for sale down the aisle - and as she did that, the only thing that she would say as she walked by was お願いします, お願いします…
By the end of the trip, the only Japanese phrase that my (now ex-) GF could say was お願いします…
The dictionary says that 返却, へんきゃく, is the return of something. I’ve already studied the kanji 返, and looking at other words having the kanji 却, its meaning seems to be something like “away”. So: “return away” or “return back”.
I’m not sure about the meaning of 台 here. Is it “stand, pedestal”? I hope I’m not expected to return the dirty dishes to 台湾.
As for 手洗い, I knew of it as a euphemism for トイレ, but apparently it can literally mean “hand wash”.
Which reminds me of this hilarious sign in Taiwan, in an underground mall at Taipei Main Station. How do you say in Chinese “this toilet is clean and well-maintained”? Answer:
Is 柵 a pictogram? I love how it looks. And it’s interesting that in Japanese you enter inside a 柵 rather than beyond it.
井の頭恩賜公園 is the name of the park and it’s at the end of 井の頭線. According to Wikipedia, it’s called “Inokashira Imperial Grant Park” because the park was considered a gift from the Emperor to the general public.
案内所, あんないじょ, is “information office”, literally something like “guidance place”. Not sure how to rationalise the meaning of 案内 as “guidance”: perhaps “suggestion” + “inside”, as in “I will guide you by suggestting what to see inside”?
In Taiwan I noticed that Traditional Chinese seems to use 國 whenever Japanese uses 国. When I later visited Japan I saw 國 used sometimes in Japan as well, I’m not sure when and why. 四国村 is a park next to Takamatsu with houses and workshops brought from villages all over Shikoku. Perhaps 國 is used in order to emphasise that this is a historical attraction?
I also wonder why 乗り場 is written in hiragana. Maybe because it’s the same number of characters anyway, so the kanji doesn’t save space?
ことでん is the local railway operator whose full name is 高松琴平電気鉄道株式会社 (Takamatsu is the prefectural capital and Kotohira is a smaller town).
Kids use bus stops and trains stations, so my guess is that some basic words are written in hiragana so children could read them as well. But it‘s just a guess.
Yes to this! I was fascinated by the signs as well.
For me it was because I was so used to the WK font I found it hard to recognise wild kanji in different fonts. Don’t get me started on restaurant menus
The street signs were an easy way of getting used to recognising kanji.
待合室 at the train station. The prefecture/region names on the number plates. Company names that we know from Australia on buildings in Japan. 消火栓 on the fire hydrants. 歯科医院 - the dental clinic we passed in 長野 Nagano.
So my phone came back with pictures of everything from snow monkeys to street signs.
100円皿, but セットプレート. I guess 皿 is a small nigiri plate and プレート is a plate with multiple dishes?
Some words spelled in kanji and their meanings according to what I can gather from dictionary lookups:
赤身 - あかみ - red meat
1貫 - いつかん - apparently, a counter just for sushi
直送 - direct delivery (from Norway)
お持ち帰り - take away, literally hold and go home
お会計 - おかいけい - bill
画面をタッチして注文して下さい - I didn’t look up 画面, but I’m going to guess from context that picture + face = screen.
青物 - I guessed it means “vegetables”, but I didn’t guess that the reading is all kunyomi.
Hahaha! And I thought I‘m the only one who misheard it that way 
of the day comes from a museum cafe on the 瀬戸内海 (せとないかい, Seto Inland Sea) island of 豊島 (てしま).
According to Wikipedia, it’s called “Inokashira Imperial Grant Park” because the park was considered a gift from the Emperor to the general public.
