The word bon can be rendered by means of several different characters or kanji in Japanese. I am aware of at least seven characters for this word. The three main ones have very different meanings: “basin,” “festival lantern,” or “tray”; “Sanskrit,” “purity,” or “Buddhist”; and “mediocre.” The three subsidiary meanings, the characters of which are most often associated with different words, such as han or man, are as follows: “crime,” “sin,” or ”offence”; “anxiety,” “trouble,” “worry,” “pain,” “nuisance,” or “irksome;” “bamboo,” “frame” or “law”; and “deception.” Now, the most common character for the word bon, which means “tray,” is made up of three subsidiary characters. Going from top to bottom, the top part means “eight” or “many” (hatchi); the middle part means “knife,” “sword,” or “cut” (katana); and the bottom part means “dish” or “helping” (sara). Not for nothing have I been warned by my Japanese friends to select characters for my name with utmost care. For better or worse, I went for the most common character. The “sword” in the middle was too much even for me.