Reading Japanese Signs, Notices, and Warnings

Why sign kanji come before textbook kanji

Most kanji lists are ordered by school year or by exam level, which means a beginner spends early weeks on characters that rarely appear in the physical world. Sign kanji are ordered by the street instead. The same words appear on every platform, every shop shutter, and every packet of food, so each one you learn is repaid several times a day rather than once a chapter.

They are also forgiving to learn. A sign gives you the context for free: a character on a door is about opening, closing, pushing or pulling, and a character on a shelf edge is about price or date. You are guessing from a very short list of possibilities, so partial knowledge is genuinely useful in a way that partial knowledge of a rare literary kanji is not.

The compressed grammar of signs

Written notices strip a sentence down to its core. Particles disappear, the verb desu is understood rather than printed, and a compound noun does the work. Tachiiri kinshi is literally entering-prohibition, and a reader supplies the rest. Once you accept that signs are labels rather than sentences, they stop looking like broken Japanese and start looking like a system.

Three suffixes carry most of the meaning. Kinshi marks something forbidden, chū marks a state that is currently in progress, and chūi marks something you should be careful of rather than something banned. Genkin is a stronger, absolute prohibition, used for fire and similar hazards. Politer public notices soften instead, with go-enryo kudasai meaning please refrain, and o-negai shimasu meaning we ask you to.

• Noun plus kinshi: forbidden, as in satsuei kinshi, photography prohibited.
• Noun plus chū: currently happening, as in kōjichū, work in progress.
• Noun plus chūi: be careful of this, as in ashimoto chūi, watch your step.
• Noun plus genkin: absolutely forbidden, as in kaki genkin, no open flames.
• Verb stem plus kudasai or go-enryo kudasai: a polite request rather than a ban.

Stations, platforms, and transfers

Notice how often the character guchi appears. It means an opening, so it turns any preceding word into a way in or out: iriguchi, deguchi, hijōguchi, kaisatsuguchi. If you are meeting someone at a large station, the compass exits matter more than the station name itself, because a big station may have exits several minutes' walk apart.

Doors, floors, and rooms

The push and pull pair is the one worth burning in first, because getting it wrong is the most common small embarrassment for a new arrival. On a glass door the character is usually printed at eye height on the side you act on. In a lift, the wider button with 開 holds the doors open and the one with 閉 closes them.

Open, closed, and everything in between

Junbichū is the one that catches people out. A restaurant showing it is not closed for the day; it is between services, usually in the afternoon, and will reopen in the evening. Teikyūbi is worth reading carefully too, since it is followed by a day of the week and often the phrase meaning except public holidays.

Warnings and prohibitions

Guessing a sign from its parts

You do not need to know a compound to make a good guess at it. A small set of single characters carries most of the meaning on public notices, and they combine in predictable ways. If a sign contains the character for fire and the character for forbid, you can act correctly without ever having seen that exact pairing before.

Two of these pairs are especially productive. Muryō and yūryō, free and paid, appear on lockers, parking, bags and Wi-Fi. Yōreizō and yōreitō, requires refrigeration and requires freezing, appear on anything you carry home. Sen'yō is the one that quietly excludes you: josei sen'yō means women only, and kankeisha sen'yō means staff only.

Prices, packaging, and dates

The two date words are not interchangeable. Shōmi kigen is about quality, so a packet slightly past it is usually still edible even if it is no longer at its best. Shōhi kigen is about safety and appears on fresh items such as bentō and sandwiches, and it should be respected. Both are usually printed as year, month, day in that order.

Asking someone what a sign means

These are the lines that turn a wall of characters into a short conversation. Keep them very short: staff are usually busy, and a pointed finger plus one clear question gets a faster answer than a long apology. Lines marked staff are what you will hear back, so read them aloud too rather than only the ones you say.

Checking a rule, a platform, and a price

Asking before acting is normal and welcome, and it is far cheaper than apologising afterwards. If the answer comes back too fast to follow, the safest recovery is mō ichido onegai shimasu, which asks for one more repetition without claiming that you understood the first time.

A two-week plan for sign kanji

• Days one to three: the openings. Iriguchi, deguchi, hijōguchi, kaisatsuguchi, and the four compass exits.
• Days four to six: the doors. Osu, hiku, hiraku, shimaru, otoko, onna, shiyōchū, kūshitsu.
• Days seven to nine: the states. Eigyōchū, junbichū, teikyūbi, kōjichū, koshōchū, and the chū suffix as a pattern.
• Days ten to twelve: the warnings. Kiken, chūi, kinshi, tachiiri kinshi, kaki genkin, dosoku kinshi.
• Days thirteen and fourteen: the shelf. Muryō, waribiki, zeikomi, shōmi kigen, shōhi kigen, yōreizō.
• Every day, say one full sentence per sign rather than the reading alone, so the word arrives attached to speech.

Two weeks of five characters a day covers almost everything above, and unlike a general kanji list you will see the results the moment you leave the house. Once the set is solid, add the words you personally keep meeting: a commuter needs the platform vocabulary, while someone cooking at home needs the packaging words far more.