What's This Kanji?

[natsilane]

I have found two examples of this particular kanji on a paper lantern here and here. When I try to write the last two characters using the IME pad I get nothing. Am I getting the stroke order wrong or are they archaic kanji or... what. I'm curious. If you know what the kanji are, can you let me know?

Thanks

[ErnieYoung]

小田本: Odamoto

[natsilane]

小田本: Odamoto

Awesome, thanks for that! Now I need to find some resource to work on reading Japanese handwriting. To me the 田 looked like 何　with a vertical line through the middle. And the 本 looked like a deformed 女.

Looks like Odamoto is a tea house in Gion, Kyoto. The Wikipedia article on Geisha has a photo of this same lantern. And here is it on Google street view.

Here are some resources for researching kanji in different styles of Japanese calligraphy.

• gg-art.com's dictionary is as simple as entering a given kanji and it'll spit back many variations of the character drawn in the different calligraphy styles.
• Wikitionary; I just change the kanji at the end of that URL for the one I want to look at. It's good for stroke order and sometimes shows the characters in different styles.
• And WWWJDIC is a great general reference.

[VideogameDC]

I don't think the kanjis for ''Da'' and ''Moto'' look like the kanjis you mentioned. At least I can tell which one is the correct one.

Watching and reading japanese related stuff helps a lot.

[Ibaraki Dave]

O is a tricky one. Sometimes that kanji (little) can be pronounced as [ko] or [o]. It's infuriating, especially since [o] is more often written using the kanji for big or dai (Da in Mandarin). I'll see names, and think that I'm going to meet Mr. Ojima, only to be embarrassed when he corrects me as Mr. Kojima. It's just one of the many things we have to look out for when learning Japanese. It's also one of the countless reasons why many foreigners give up trying to learn the language.

I'll be honest with you, the [moto] kanji looks more like the standardized Mandarin kanji for car with an extra stroke off to the right. It can't be though, because Japan still uses the older form of kanji. It is [moto], however sloppily so.

[soudou]

Here are a couple more resources for finding Kanji if you didn't already know of them:
http://kanji.sljfaq.org/
http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/

I don't think the kanjis for ''Da'' and ''Moto'' look like the kanjis you mentioned. At least I can tell which one is the correct one.

I think when written on the forum it is easy to tell, but on the lantern with fancy calligraphy there is no bottom enclosing line on the box. So it looks like a type of Kanji with a 3-sided box.
I think it's sort of like the difference between cursive English and typed lettering. Sometimes it can be harder to read someones cursive handwriting even if you know English well!

[VideogameDC]

I don't think the kanjis for ''Da'' and ''Moto'' look like the kanjis you mentioned. At least I can tell which one is the correct one.

I think when written on the forum it is easy to tell, but on the lantern with fancy calligraphy there is no bottom enclosing line on the box. So it looks like a type of Kanji with a 3-sided box.
I think it's sort of like the difference between cursive English and typed lettering. Sometimes it can be harder to read someones cursive handwriting even if you know English well!

[/quote]

I see, but I think that in that case, you may want to practice the cursive letter and kanjis when you want to write them.
But you made a good point there, soudou!