New kanji!

I've been browsing through my new kanji books and I think they've been a success already. I haven't actually learned that much from them but they have changed my attitude from 'kanji is stupid' to 'kanji is cool-sort of'. The neat thing about it is how it combines different kanji to form new words and sometimes gives a lot of insight into Japanese culture.

Take this is an example- the kanji for marriage 姻, is a combination of 女(woman) and 因(depend). I'll let you draw your own conclusions. Here's another one: the kanji for noisy or immoral is 姦, that is, three kanji of woman. And lastly, the kanji for strong or manly is 壮, the left-hand kanji being 'big' and the right-hand kanji being 'samurai'. Interesting as heck, I tell ya.

My own personal kanji has improved slightly. I now know (wait let me try and write it just to make sure I'm not lying).........Yep I remember! Here it is!

日　sun
月 moon
火 fire
水 water
木 wood
金 gold
土 earth
曜日 add this kanji to the above to make the days of the week
川 river

It's still fairly easy, straightforward stuff but it's a little more difficult than the numbers at least! It's interesting to see that some of the Japanese days of the week are similar to our own. For example, 日曜日 (sun+day) is the same as our Sunday and 月曜日 (moon+day) is the same as our Monday.