I feel so lame, I have a mug with I believe Chinese logograms on it and have wondered for ages what it says.
So I thought I’d be clever and take photos of the mug and them upload them through a Google Image search, but I get no useful results that way. I don’t know any good humored Chinese speakers in my life so I’m admitting defeat.
This is my last ditch effort to know what this mug says. If there are no takers, then I guess I give-up, at least for another couple of years.
They could be Chinese characters or Japanese Kanji – they’re almost identical. It’s been many years since I studied Chinese, and these characters are written in a calligraphic style that makes it difficult for me to identify the radicals composing the characters. Notice the left sided radicals in photos 2 and 3 are identical. I don’t have my dictionary or any Chinese friends at hand so I can’t identify them. But I’ll keep working on it.
Right on, sundawg! I recognized parts of the characters but not enough to be able to look them up in my old dictionary (# of strokes) or new dictionary (by radical).
As a Chinese speaker, sundog nailed it. They’re very common symbols in Chinese. I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up in Japanese culture as well; there’s a great deal of overlap between the two and they even named a minor deity after those characters: Fukurokuju - Wikipedia
PS - You can just call them “characters” “Logogram” makes them sound crazy ancient.