In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings. For example, the word "sushi" is often written with its . Though the two characters have the readings and respectively, the character means "one's natural life span" and means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. as a means of representing loanwords has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of (see also Transcription into Japanese), although many coined in earlier eras still linger on. Usage today are used conventionally for certain words, such as ('sushi'), though these words may be written in hiragana (especially for native words), or katakana (especially for borrowed words), with preference depending on the particular word, context, and choice of the writer. are particularly common on traditional store signs and menus. For example, "tempura" may be written as . The Japanese loanword for "coffee" is generally written using the katakana , but on coffee shop signs and menus it may be written with the Chinese word , which is then pronounced irregularly to their normal Japanese reading (their ). Many characters have gained meanings derived from usage. For example, were once widely utilized for foreign place names; such as in the used to write "Asia". The original word is now considered archaic, but the character has gained the meaning "Asia" in such compounds as , even though originally meant "subsequent" (and continues to). From the , the second character was taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage , which literally translates to "rice country" but means "United States of America"; however, remains in far more common use in modern Japanese. Major natural gas companies in Japan use the in their company names, but use the katakana in their trade names. Phono-semantic matching When using to represent loanwords, the kanji are sometimes chosen for both their semantic and phonetic values, a form of phono-semantic matching. A stock example is () for "club", where the characters can be interpreted loosely in sequence as "together", "fun" and "place". Another example is () for the Portuguese , a kind of raincoat. The characters can mean "wings coming together", as the pointed resembles a bird with wings folded together. History