Japanese

Japanese

Japanese is spoken by approximately 125 million people worldwide--almost all of whom live in Japan. Outside of Japan, small Japanese-speaking communities are located in the U.S. and Brazil. The modern Japanese language has four popular writing systems."Kanji", shown on this decorative Japanese lunch box, is very similar to the Chinese symbol system of "hanzi". The other writing systems are "hiragana", "katakana" and "romaji". [BM] {VA}