Children in Japanese schools have to learn about 2,000 kanji characters. That is a lot, but people need to know that many to read and write modern Japanese. However, there are many characters that people don’t know. There was a TV quiz show yesterday, and the people on the show had to read characters for 10 different birds. I guessed the name of one bird correctly, and my wife got another two, but we didn’t know the other seven. Characters are great because you can guess that they are birds, but there are too many characters to learn the names of all the birds! I’m glad that most bird names are written in katakana now.   (115 words)

Watch the video at https://youtu.be/vUVUzVlTGfg

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