Today’s word of the day is 鉱山 (kōzan). Which is just Japanese for “mine.” Not the fun “mine” as in Mine! Mine! Mine! from Finding Nemo. No, this is the delightful pit-in-the-ground, canary-killing, back-breaking, soul-draining kind. The kind you get assigned to in dystopias and black-and-white documentaries about children with no teeth. Let’s take a…

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造 (tsukuru) is a kanji that started off as a complete snooze fest and somehow ended up with a far more dramatic and somewhat absurd history than anyone could have anticipated. Let’s rewind and look at how this character went from boring to “wow, now that’s something.” Originally, 造 (tsukuru) was made up of two…

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