I live in a 郡 (gun, county) that has a name so strange that my home computer can’t recognize it when I type it in. At work, the computer is set to know that ほうすぐん (Housu-gun, the county created out of the towns of the 奥能登, the inner-Noto) is written as 鳳珠郡. At home, I have to manually input the kanji by typing 鳳 (ootori), one of the many kanji for phoenix and 珠 , the su of Suzu 珠洲 and an alternate kanji for tama, ball, sphere.

Typing it is bad enough, but have you ever seen someone try to read 鳳珠郡? Anyone who doesn’t live here, Japanese or otherwise, will just give you a blank look as you fill out your address.

Fortunately, while searching for the correct reading of some small towns’ kanji during the Summer Festival Season project for this blog…