Interesting that a lot of US road signs have words on them: https://ygraph.com/graphs/roadsigns-20120316T030941-ekrruua.... , or are obvious, whereas in Europe drivers need to learn what they mean: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh...

For example the yield triangle, no stopping and no parking are probably unfamiliar to US drivers.

Meanwhile all Alfa Romeo Quadrofoglio drivers might be mistaken for drivers with missing limbs in Japan.

In New Zealand we require a yellow [L] sign on cars with learner drivers (with learners drivers licenses). However I get the impression that other drivers are less considerate around a car displaying the [L] sign.

I suspect New Zealanders are generally far less considerate than Japanese. Politeness avoids a trillion sharp edges.

We also seem to be copying some of the US predilection of arsehole Ute (pickup) drivers.

They used a pictogram to convey a kanji pun (chō refers to butterfly (蝶) as well as part of the word chõkaku (聴覚), sense of hearing).

How dumb; at least the butterfly wings sort of look like ears a little bit.

There are limits to both. Obviously it wouldn't be effective to have a bumper sticker that says "This driver has been driving for less than a year, so please use caution around them"; if you lean too much on the power of writing, you make it too hard to quickly identify the meaning. On the other hand, it's not easy to come up with a wide variety of sui generis symbols and still have them be visually distinguishable at a glance, so there's also a limit to how far that approach can get you.

I do wonder whether there is some link between differential reliance on symbols of this sort and the use of alphabetic vs. nonalphabetic writing systems in different languages/cultures. Like, crudely speaking, is it the case that, because you already have to learn so many separate symbols to read Japanese, learning a few more for stuff like "elderly driver" isn't much of an extra load? Or is it the reverse, that because you have to learn so many symbols to read Japanese, they want to make these separate symbols for a small set of important meanings so people can learn them even if they don't know how to read? I'm not sure whether there's a real link here or not but it's interesting to think about.

And so for "laughing a lot" people would write 'wwwwwwww'.

But then 'wwwwwwwwww' looks not unlike grass.

So now to say they're laughing a lot, they're using the real kanji for grass.

We went from 'w', a romanji used as a shortcut for a japanese word, to a kanji because, visually, many 'wwwwwwww' looked somehow like grass.

It's fascinating how in Japan the approach feels more visual. I mean: we may be doing similar things with our "romanji" (roman characters, as japanese calls them) but it's less common.

Speech / ideas / words: it's really something else.

Train station melody chimes are another great example — they differ by station and line, so locals unconsciously recognize which station they're at by sound alone, without reading anything.

There are countless other forms of "reading the air" throughout Japanese daily life. I'd genuinely recommend visiting Japan once to experience it firsthand.