Japanese is interesting because one “letter” in the alphabet represents a complex sound (e.g. か = “ka”) and one kanji can describe an entire word (e.g. 花 = “han

Japanese is interesting because one “letter” in the alphabet represents a complex sound (e.g. か = “ka”) and one kanji can describe an entire word (e.g. 花 = “hana” = flower). So a column of Japanese characters is actually more information dense than a column of English characters, at least phonetically.