57653
I am informally teaching Japanese to friends and they sometimes ask
interesting questions I can't answer.

Yesterday, I told them that ゆ could often be seen in front of public bath
houses, and someone asked me why the kanji wasn't used. I guess it has been
like this for centuries, so that everybody can read the sign, but I am not
sure about it.
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2018-03-31T16:40:04.080
57649
2018-03-31T18:26:43.297
19376
question
hiragana
Why is ゆ written in hiragana on bath houses' noren?
Imagery vs. Information

Try staring at the kanji 「湯」 for 5 minutes and tell me what it enabled you to
"see" and/or "imagine". Did you have fun?

I did it before posting my answer and all I "saw" was hot water. I had no fun
staring at the kanji. **Kanji have specific meanings and that means there is
not much room for imagination**. 「湯」 means "hot water", but who **_does not_**
know that a public bathhouse has hot water?

Now try staring at the hiragana 「ゆ」 for 5 minutes. What did you see? Maybe not
much if you do not possess a large vocabulary in Japanese.

I started staring at 「ゆ」 and within 30 seconds, I was already in ゆ-topia with
the nice images conjured by the kana.

I was soaking in the perfect-temperature **ゆ** very **ゆ** ったりと("relaxed") and
**ゆ** っくりと("leisurely"). I obtained 心の **ゆ** とり("ease of mind"). Thank **ゆ**
so much, public bathhouse!

If we have three writing systems, we might as well take advantage of each of
them? Who cares if that caused Japanese-learners confusion? English was never
an English-learner-friendly language, either!

Above is just a personal opinion of a native Japanese speaker, ゆ know.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-31T18:26:43.297
57653
2018-03-31T18:26:43.297
57649
answer