昔
むかし · mukashi · JLPT N4 · noun
days
🏯📜 mukashi: sounds like moo-cash-ee — in the old days, cows were cash
Every Japanese folktale opens with mukashi mukashi, the equivalent of once upon a time. The kanji 昔 has 日 (day) at the bottom under a stack of layers: days piled on days = the past.