Skill: Sign Kanji

A coin in a teller’s window — the yen at its booth. Printed tags use ¥; handwritten menus, market stalls, and izakaya chalkboards use 円. If you can read numbers and 円, every handwritten price in Japan is yours.

入 is a wedge slipping into something — point-first. Into the opening: 入口, the way in. One look-alike to respect: 入 enters (the wedge leads); 人 — person — walks (two legs apart).

deguchi

出 is a sprout pushing up and out of its pot — twice, for emphasis. Out of the opening: 出口, the way out. Big stations mark exits in English; konbini back doors and parking garages don’t.

A footprint frozen mid-stride. This is the single most useful character on a Japanese control panel: on the toilet’s washlet arm, 止 is the button that makes everything stop — find it before you experiment with the others. On the road, 止まれ painted at intersections is “stop” for cyclists. And the footprint works twice more below: it’s the closing half of both 禁止 (forbidden) and 中止 (cancelled) — learn it once, read three signs.

中 is a line through the middle of a box — inside. And here is this skill’s first rule, not just a sign: anything ending in 中 means something is in progress right now. 使用中 = in use. The rule stretches to signs this page never teaches — 準備中 (preparing), 工事中 (under construction): even with an unreadable front half, the 中 tells you this is mid-something — and on a latch, a door, or a barrier, mid-something almost always cashes out the same way: wait, or come back later. (One happy exception is worth learning whole, and it gets its own card below: 営業中 — open for business.)

vacant

空 is the sky over a workbench — open space, nothing there. On a stall latch, 空き (often green) is the all-clear. Remember the shape: it returns below as the vacancy lamp.

A figure mid-curtsey — one smooth crossing stroke. On bath doors it often rides a red or pink curtain, and it heads the women-only-car decal (女性専用車) — the 女 plus the pink carries the whole compound, which is why this course teaches one character and not four.

otoko

Power 力 working the rice field 田: the field-hand — men. The Onsen booster taught the ゆ curtain; these two characters are what tell you which ゆ is yours. Blue is usual for 男 — but read the character, not the color; small bathhouses repaint.

A hand 扌 flattening a stamp against the door — push. The classic traveler embarrassment is a door rattled the wrong way with staff watching; these two plates are why.

pull

A bow 弓 with its string drawn straight back — pull. Keep this shape warm: it comes back at the end of this skill earning you money, inside 割引 (discount).

Both of this pair wear the same gate-frame 門 — the tell is what’s inside the gate. 開 has the bar lifted off on two legs: the gate swings free — open. In an elevator, this is the button that saves your closing door.

close

閉 has a prop jammed under the bar — braced shut. Shop doors use the pair too: 開店 (opening) and 閉店 (closing) on the hours placard — with the gate-tell, you can already tell which is which.

A person 亻 leaning against a tree 木, taking the day off. Your ear has owned yasumi since Lesson 7 — this is its street face, and it heads a whole family you now read for free: お休み (closed), 休業 (closed for business), 定休日 (regular closing day), 臨時休業 (temporarily closed). One member matters more than comfort: 運休 — service suspended — is what the station boards show in a typhoon; it’s the written face of the Weather booster’s keikaku unkyuu. You read the 休, you know the day’s shape; the camera app can have the details.

Look closely: you were never taught this sign, and you can already read it. 中 (in progress) + 止 (stop) — stopped mid-plan: cancelled. This is the payoff of learning shapes as parts. It shares a shelf with a sadder cousin you’ve met: the Shokken booster’s 売切 lamp (sold out) — together they’re Japan’s disappointment family, usually taped up in haste at exactly eye height.

金 is a little pagoda with gold bars stacked inside — money, and the half worth learning: anywhere 金 appears near a till, money is being discussed. 現金 is genkin, the word you’ve produced since Lesson 3; on self-checkout screens it’s the button you press, and 現金のみ on a stall’s sign is “cash only” — the warning that sends you to the konbini ATM first.

料 is the fee character — it shares its root with ryouri (cooking): a measure of rice, the oldest bill in Japan. 無 is a dancer with too many legs and nothing left to hold — without. Without fee: free. The amenity basket labeled 無料 is yours to raid.

yuuryou

有 is a hand holding meat — having. Having a fee: paid. The pair usually appears exactly where you’d hope: 無料 on one bin of umbrellas, 有料 on the nicer bin.

You already own futsuu as a spoken word — “normal, average” from Lesson 3. On a departure board it means the normal train: every stop, no surcharge, no surprises. If your station is small, 普通 is your train.

A hand clutching a racing heart — hurry. One shape covers the whole speed ladder: 急行 (express) and 特急 (tokkyuu, limited express — the Trains booster’s word) both wear it. The safe reading is defensive: 急 near your platform = this train is in a hurry and may not stop for you. One more place the shape means urgency: 急 inside a red box is 緊急 — emergency — the platform’s emergency-stop button.

満 is a tank brimming with water 氵— full to the top. You’ve heard its words already: manshitsu (no rooms), manseki (no seats). The suffix names what’s full — 室 room, 席 seat, 車 car park — and lamps drop the suffix entirely: a red 満 over the parking entrance, a green 空 (unit four’s empty — its second job) when there’s space. Red full, green vacant, and you can read both bare.

約 is a thread knotted around a ladle — a promise tied in advance; 予 means beforehand. Yoyaku, the reservation word you’ve produced since Lesson 7. The 予約席 tent card is this skill’s quietest trap: an inviting empty table, zero other cues, and a genuinely awkward moment if you sit. Now it can’t happen to you.

禁 is two trees over an altar 示 — a sacred grove: hands off. Add the frozen footprint 止 and it’s law: forbidden. Your ear knows kinshi from the trail and shrine boosters (tachiiri kinshi — no entry). The common front halves — 立入 (entering), 駐輪 (parking a bike), 撮影 (photography), 火気 (open flame) — are worth a passing look, but you never need them: the verdict plus the location carries it. And one rule for free: any 禁 anywhere means the prohibition family — 厳禁 is just “strictly.”

Pour 注 your mind 意 onto it — attention. The tripwire’s quiet half: something here can hurt or trip you, and looking around almost always reveals what (the step, the low beam, the monkeys). If looking doesn’t answer it — camera app. Your ear owns chuui from the Outdoors booster’s bear warnings.

危 is a person crouched at a cliff edge, and that’s the meaning: 危険 is 注意’s louder sibling — electric fences, river weirs, construction drops, thin ice. This is the one sign where the camera-app advice hardens into safety advice: a 危険 that context doesn’t explain gets translated immediately, not shrugged at. Your ear’s word for this feeling is abunai (Lesson 8’s adjective) — 危険 is how walls say it.

禁 you now own; 煙 is smoke curling off a fire — no smoking. Entire street blocks in Tokyo are 禁煙 zones, stenciled on the pavement with a fine attached, and this also decodes a word you’ve spoken: kin-en-seki 禁煙席, the non-smoking seat you asked for in the manga kissa.

営業 is the business, at work; add the 中 rule from unit four — happening right now — and the door sign reads itself: open. The rule’s real gift is every other flip-sign: 準備中 (preparing — not yet), 清掃中 (cleaning). You don’t need to know the front word: anything + 中 that isn’t 営業 means “not serving you right now.”

Hand 手 + wash 洗 with the polite お in front — the honorable hand-washing place. Lesson 4 taught your ear to catch otearai in spoken answers; this is the same word carved on the wooden plaque at the end of an izakaya corridor, where no pictogram ventures.

keshoushitsu

化粧 is make-up; 室 is the room suffix you met on 満室. The powder room — same destination, dressed up, standard in department stores and hotel lobbies. Between these two plaques and the 男/女 pair, no restroom door in Japan can turn you away unread.

税 is tax — rice 禾 plus the exchange radical: the government’s share of the harvest, and the root of zeikin, the Tax-Free booster’s word. Now look inside 込: your unit-two wedge 入 is hiding in there — entered in. Tax entered in: the tag is the whole truth.

tax excluded

抜 is the hand 扌 pulling something out — tax pulled out of the printed number. The Prices skill taught your ear the totals; this pair decides whether the tag already is one. Same skill, opposite ends: eyes on the tag, ear at the register.

半 is a thing split clean down the middle — half — and 額 is the amount. The Depachika booster called hangaku “the most profitable word in Japanese”; this is what its red sticker actually says during the closing-time sweep.

waribiki

Cut 割 and pull 引 — the price cut down and pulled back: a discount, waribiki. The number in front counts tenths: 2割引 is 20% off, 3割引 is 30% off. And keep an eye out for 特 near any price — 特価, 特売 — the “special” character; it always means a deal. That’s 引’s promised return from the door plates: the same shape that pulled the door now pulls the price.