This is a sign that is quite common especially in the busier areas of big cities like Tokyo.

There are certain places where you are not allowed to cross, and the arrow indicates the next part of the street where you are allowed to cross the road safely.

Kanji Breakdown

横断 (おう-だん) – Crossing
禁止 (きん-し) – Prohibit/Ban/Forbib

This is a good example of where just knowing one basic kanji eg 止 (stop) can come in very handy. Don’t be bothered about not knowing the other three kanji just yet as they are N2 and N3 level so you’ll get those later if you’re just starting off.

You might look at the sign and get confused by the four kanji in its entirety but break it down one by one until you identify the kanji you know and take it from there.

Obviously this sign is fairly obvious in its meaning but at least if you know (止) then you will know to stop and follow the arrow.

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This kanji sign caught my eye at Shinjuku station in Tokyo as it was quite a cool November morning and the glass waiting room (待合室) attached to the sign turned out to be a whole lot warmer than standing on the platform waiting for my train up to Nikko.

So as we can see in the photo there are just three kanji featured:

To get to our final meaning, the first two kanji need to be concatenated in to what is known as a kanji compound, where two kanji are joined together to form a new word.

Sometimes the word resulting from the two kanji joined together has very little or nothing to do with the two kanji within it and other times it all makes perfect sense like this example.

待合 as a compound gives us the first part of the phrase “meeting place” plus the third kanji means “room”.

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