And the long-awaited answer is . . . F!  Here are the numbers four through ten in the proper order:

四　五　六　七　八　九　十

We hereby award one (1) MWP (Meaningless Wordsman Point) apiece to A Fan, Shirley, and Gramma F, because this is a game where you get points not for getting the right answer but for justifying your guess.  Thanks to all who participated.

Before we move on from numbers, I’d just like to point out that kanji are always out to get you, even the simplest-looking ones.  The numbers that I am using here, and which anyone would learn in a first-year Japanese class, are in fact simplified forms, meaning that they have more complex versions that are used in formal documents.  One and two may be easy to recognize when they’re just one or two horizontal lines, but how about when they look like this?

壱（１）　弐（２）　参（３）

But now let’s proceed to another basic task: identifying the days of the week.  Just as in English, in Japanese the days of the week follow a simple pattern, varying the beginning but all ending in the same way.  Rather than ending in “-day,” however, they all end with this:

曜日

And let me tell you, as a freshman just starting to learn Japanese, that first character really made me wonder what I was getting myself into.  Fortunately, none of the characters that actually differentiate the days are anywhere near that complicated.  So here’s this week’s challenge: since today is Monday, tell me which of these characters is placed in front of the two shown above to mean “Monday.”  And remember: points for creativity.

A. 火　B. 金　C. 月　D. 水　E. 土　F. 日　G. 木