Ryuk's Kanji Lesson

池袋の道路標識 - Road sign in Ikebukuro

I recently took a trip over to Tokyo to finally visit the city I've only seen in various forms of media with my own two eyes. While searching for Kanji in Tokyo I came across this street sign in Ikebukuro. Do you know what it says? Well lets figure it out shall we!

(上)The top line:

人（ひと）- This Kanji, hito, is for person
の - Hiragana, no, can be used as a possessive particle
乗降（じょうこう）- These two Kanji form a noun, joukou, for 'getting on and off'
を - Hiragana, wo, is a particle used to link direct objects with verbs
除く（のぞく）- The Kanji, nozo, with the hiragana, ku, forms a Regular 1 or う (u) verb for 'remove', 'get rid of', 'exclude' or 'except for'

Translation: [Reading the X as an international sign for 'NO'] No entrance except for the getting on and off of people.

(下）The bottom line:

日曜（にちよう）- The first Kanji, nichi, represents the 'sun' or 'a day' and the second Kanji, you, is 'day of the week' which often looks like, 日曜日 nichiyoubi, representing Sunday
休日（きゅうじつ）- The first Kanji, kyuu, means 'holiday' more often seen in 休み, yasumi, as 'holiday' and again with 'day' read as, jitsu, to make, kyuujitsu, for 'holiday'
を - wo again to link the direct object to the verb
除く（のぞく） - nozoku again meaning 'except for'

Translation: Except for the Sunday holiday. [Note: There is a dot between 日曜 and 休日which could translate as 'Sundays and holidays', but I'm unsure about this.]

So what we have is a street in Ikebukuro that cannot be driven on unless its used to drop off or pick up passengers except on Sundays and possibly holidays.

Unfortunately that ends my Kanji of Tokyo series. As Tokyo is a popular tourist location in Japan most of the signs had Kanji and English written on them.

Comments and suggestions are welcome, Thank you.

始める

Hello and welcome to the Death By Kanji Blog! After some experimenting and thought I've decided to make this blog exclusively about Kanji I see or find here in Japan. I wanted to combine a kind of photo blog with Kanji and now I will start to photograph Kanji and explain its meaning to everyone and myself.