喫茶店
きっさてん · kissaten · JLPT N5 · noun
café
☕🍵 喫茶店 = consume + tea + shop: a tea-drinking shop, i.e. a café
喫 (kitsu) means to consume or drink, 茶 (sa) is tea, 店 (ten) is shop. Kitsu + sa contracts to kissa, giving kissaten. The word names the old-style Japanese coffee house, even though the characters say tea.
茶 — grass radical 艹 + 余 (phonetic)
茶 combines the grass radical 艹, indicating a plant, with 余 serving as the phonetic component. It originally derived from the older character 荼, which referred broadly to bitter herbs; a stroke was dropped during the Tang dynasty to distinguish the tea plant specifically. Today it means tea.
店 — 广 (shelter radical) + 占 (zhān, phonetic)
店 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The radical 广 depicts a roof or open shelter, suggesting a building, while 占 supplies the sound (zhān → diàn). Originally it referred to a roadside inn or stall set up under a shelter, and over time the meaning narrowed to 'shop' or 'store'.