茶

Tea, Brown

JLPT N4

Interesting Fact

🟤 The kanji 茶 originally meant "tea," but over time it also came to represent the color brown. Traditional green tea leaves turn brown as they are dried, roasted, or brewed, and the resulting tea often has a brownish color. That's why modern Japanese uses 茶色 (ちゃいろ, chairo) to mean "brown"—literally "tea color."

Memory Trick

Break down 茶: 艹 = grass/leaves 人 = person 木 = tree. Imagine a person picking tea leaves from plants and carrying them to a wooden table to make tea. Grass + Person + Tree = 茶.