火曜日
かようび · kayoubi · JLPT N5 · noun
Tuesday
🔥 火曜日 = fire + weekday: Tuesday is fire day
火 (ka) is fire, 曜日 (youbi) is day of the week. Japanese weekdays follow the planets: Tuesday belongs to Mars, the fire star (火星), just as Spanish martes and Italian martedì come from Mars.
火 — pictograph of flames rising
火 is a pictograph showing flames rising upward from a fire, with the central stroke as the main blaze and the side strokes as sparks. The ancient oracle bone form looked even more clearly like a burning flame. It still means 'fire' today and serves as a common radical in characters related to heat, burning, or cooking.
日 — pictograph of the sun
日 is a pictograph of the sun, originally drawn as a circle with a dot or stroke inside representing the sun's substance. Over time the round shape was squared off into the modern rectangular form. It means 'sun' and by extension 'day'.