Here's an addiction that doesn't require a 12-step recovery program. For the past six years, Berkeley, Calif.-based freelance writer Eve Kushner has been a self-proclaimed, unapologetic "kanji-holic." Kushner details her passion for Sino-Japanese characters in a new textbook, "Crazy for Kanji: A Student's Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters" (Stone Bridge Press).
Kushner, who penned "Crazy" in the first-person, is particularly intrigued with the way a kanji's components fit together logically to form an individual character and with the "elegant construction" of kanji compound words.
"Teasing out the tangles in kanji, breaking the code, provides me with endless hours of entertainment, as well as thrilling epiphanies," she writes in the introduction to her book.