Illuminati-R-Us

I find myself, exactly one week later, standing next to the exact same sign, waiting for the same bus, which may or may not be driven by the same driver.

So let me comment further. As I understand, the Japanese writing system is a bit of a jumble, combining three different systems. I can usually tell Japanese because a lot of it looks Chinese, but then has much “curvier” writing interspersed here and there.

Of the seven characters in a vertical column, they all look Chinese to me, with the possible exception of the last. I understand the first and the fifth, so I score 28.57%.

The fifth is the character for the number “one”. The mandarin pronunciation is something like “Yee”, in a steady even tone. (They write it “Yi” in Pinyin.) I have no idea what the Japanese pronunciation is.

The first means “north”. Its mandarin pronunciation is “bei”, as in “Beijing”, although you have to start out at a high pitch, then slur down to a lower pitch, then slur back up to your original pitch. I infer from what I see here that the Japanese pronunciation of this character is something like “Ho” (no idea about the tone), the first character in “Hokkaido”, the northernmost large island in Japan. Or maybe it is “Hok”.

I have seen similar differences in Chinese and Japanese pronunciation in 东京, which means “east capital”. The Chinese pronunciation is “Dong Jing” (the second character being the same one as in “Beijing” and “Nanjing”, which mean “north capital” and “south capital”, respectively). However, the Japanese pronunciation of 东京 is completely different - it is “Tokyo”.

That’s all I know.