Kanji - the characters derived from Chinese and adapted into written Japanese - are so visible in Japan that visitors from China may have an occasional illusion that they are still in their own country.

The use of kanji for place names is particularly helpful. Chinese people can make educated guesses about meaning and navigate successfully even though they don't know how to pronounce the words.

But be careful: while a lot of kanji words look like Chinese, they can differ in meaning.