Today is December 15th, the day that the Kanji of the Year is chosen in Japan.
The JapanToday website wrote:
The kanji character 安 “an,” meaning peace or safety, has been chosen as the character best representing the sentiment and events in Japan in 2015.
The character refers to the controversial security legislation that the government passed in the summer.
The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, a Kyoto-based organization that promotes kanji, conducts the survey nationwide every year. The foundation said 129,647 submissions were received this year, with 安 being the most popular, garnering 5,632 votes.
In an event held on Tuesday, Seihan Mori,the head priest at the world-famous Kiyomizu Buddhist temple in Kyoto, drew the character with a large calligraphy brush, whose bristles were the size of a bowling pin, on a huge piece of “washi” (Japanese paper).
The second most popular character was 爆, “baku” (explosion), a reference to “bakugai,” meaning explosive buying (shopping sprees) by Chinese tourists visiting Japan.
The third most popular kanji was 戦, meaning war, referring to the many conflicts going on in the Middle East and the war on terror.
Tokyo Five 
I can barely read printed kanji/hanxi, but “an” is one of that I know. I hope that means I get a year to improve my skills.
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Do you study Japanese?
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I’ve been trying to learn to write kanji/hanxi
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Self-study?
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How interesting to see the second spot 🙂
I checked for the Chinese word of the year but it hasn’t been voted yet it seems
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That second-place one is because this year there was a sudden huge surge in tourists from China visiting Japan.
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In Europe is also a huge stream of Chinese tourists who come mainly for shopping for a few years now. My hometown got for some years now designer outlet center and whenever I go there it is full of Chinese, there are certain travel agencies driving them f rom shopping destination to the next by big tour busses 🙂
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They are particularly fond of Japanese drug stores! Sometimes emptying shelves by buying so many items of certain products.
That can be frustrating for people who live here.
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