By D’Amonie Armstrong

Coming up to Level 2 in Japanese, I was beyond excited to dive into more complex language, the toughest writing system to really grasp, Kanji. I have been anticipating both the hardship and excitement of what Kanji would bring. Our first few characters we learned were the days of the week. There was a days of the week song that sensei showed us. It was for kids but it helped me memorize the days in order. 

In English, we start our week from Monday and end at Sunday. In Japanese, the week starts on Sunday and ends Saturday. The particle for “day,” regarding to of the week, is よう日 (youbi), so we had to memorize the characters for specific days. The characters have distinct meanings. For example, the character for Tuesday 火 (ka) is also the character for wild(fires), Wednesday’s character 水 (sui) is also water. My absolute favorite in terms of writing and meaning is Friday 金 (kin), meaning money!!! Friday is money day; payday!! The character itself is the most complex with the total of eight short majestic strokes.

I can’t wait to continue this journey of diving deep into essential kanji to further my comprehension skills at this level.