I just had a "phoenix down" style revelation about Tokyo and Kyoto

The two historic capitals of Japanese use the same parts in reverses in western script.
Kyoto and Tokyo

I won't go into the Kanji meaning, I have no clue about any of that - I'm just a dumb American. But, I was shocked that even in western scrips I never noticed that the two cites were made of up of the same letters.

I don't remember ever not knowing this.

I also didn't realize Miles Prower until Giantbomb pointed it out.

I guess whether or not you recognize these things depends on how you think or something.

Shit, I never realized that either. I know nothing of kanji so I’m curious how it is written in Japanese versus English.

I never noticed it before, but realized the second after I saw this forum title. Feel like a fool now.

Wasn't that a Futurama joke?

So, the GB forum software seems to be blocking Japanese characters in posts, so this is probably going to be a little more confusing than it should be.

The "to" in each word doesn't use the same kanji character, and in fact, they're not pronounced or precisely romanized in exactly that way either, because the "to" in Tokyo is elongated (Toukyou/Tōkyō), whereas the "to" in Kyoto is short (Kyouto/Kyōto).

That said, the official name of Tokyo is apparently "Tokyo-to," and that second "to" is the same character as in Kyoto. Let's just say for simplicity's sake that Tokyo means "Eastern capital" while Kyoto just means "capital."

as soon as i saw the two words next to eachother i had the same phoenix down moment. Good catch.

I didn't realize "smog" is a portmanteau of "smoke" and "fog" until a few years ago (I'm in my 30s).

I have a friend who didn't get the pun of wrestling manager "Paul Bearer" until a few years ago too.

I didn't get the naming in will.i.am until about 2 years ago. Thought he was just being regal.

Hah, I had a similar experience while in Japan last year and decided to look up if they were anagrams outside of English and found a couple of reddit and Quora threads with people arguing about it, because, the internet.