What is this piece of plastic from my wife's 4Runner?

This has been in the trunk since she bought her car, it’s a 2016(?) Toyota 4Runner SRS. It’s probably about 8" wide. Looks like it’s some sort of alternate cover for some compartment in the trunk, perhaps? But I didn’t see any obvious place for it to fit. No idea what the Japanese character on the included piece of paper is either.

Front license plate mount ?

Optional wing package?

Yup! Thanks.

I didn’t take it out of the plastic packaging at first because the adhesive was melted and I just didn’t feel like messing with it, but looking closer I found the part number, and you were right.

https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-52114-35040-Bumper-Mounting-Bracket/dp/B01F97UZVM

The end.

The symbol means red in Japanese, according to Google translate. Aka.

It can also mean “bare” or “empty”; none of them make much sense to me in this context…

In Chinese, but I don’t think it has those connotations in Japanese. Here’s one with the kanji for yellow on it: Amazon.com

Looks like a centerboard to me. You should keep it down on all points except a run otherwise you’ll just be slipping leeward. Don’t forget to raise it before landing back at the beach.

Have you tried drilling small holes in it?

The Jap word in context means “naked” as in “bare” if anyone is interested.

Really, dude?

I realized I spelled license wrong just now. :(

Yup. “Red” is legit as well, but it’s used stand for “null, naked, bare, unadorned” in this context. Basically it’s a null number plate that can be used in certain countries when vehicles are pending registration.

We dont have that in Singapore. But I have seen “null” number plates when travelling in Cambodia.

It seems your wife has received a holy artifact of Kanon. She’ll need to make a pilgrimage to Sanjusangendo Temple to return it whilst fighting off yokai and undead samurai along the way.

There may also be cyber-ninja from the mighty Fujiwara-Hitachi mega conglomerate sent to stop her from reaching the temple as well.

Au contraire, you spelled it correctly for the UK, where licence is the noun and license the verb. Or at least it used to be; the influx of US culture means they’re pretty interchangeable nowadays.

That’s odd because although there is a word for naked that contains this character, I’m not seeing the meaning of bare or naked for the character itself for Japanese in dictionaries. If that’s true, what does the “yellow” character mean in this context in that link I found upthread?

I’m not going to argue. I’ll just like to refer to the first entry in page 2 of the online jap dict.

A single character in a kanji can carry different meaning in the context even if an accompanying word normally necessary is not present if the context is clear enough. The only reason why I’m familiar with it and it’s usage in this context is that I know the kanji character in Chinese which retains the meaning and have a same usage pattern. Feel free to disagree.

I’ll let you have the last word if you do intend to respond. Not that I’m disrespectful or anything, just that I don’t think any further input on my part will convince anyone if the above entry in the Japanese dict is not acceptable.

Well, I ask because:

  1. nothing on that page (this is one of the dictionaries I’ve used) says “bare” or “naked” (edit: not quite true, see below)

  2. wiktionary does list bare or naked as a meaning for the character in Chinese, but Chinese and Japanese are different languages and sometimes the same characters don’t mean exactly the same things in each (I can only assume the situation is similar for Korean and Vietnamese, but I have no experience with those languages)

  3. I found another, similar part with the character for “yellow” on it, which doesn’t really fit into the “bare” or “naked” idea and wondered if you could shed some light on that.

In light of the above, I remain skeptical of the bare/naked interpretation. I don’t really consider this “arguing”.

Edit: There are a couple of words buried in there that have to do with nakedness, e.g. 赤肌 and 赤裸々. Still! With the whole yellow thing…well, I don’t know maybe that has some other, relevant meaning, too? But colors seem like the choice of Okham’s razor here.

Maybe I’ll list some and let you judge for yourself.

赤面 - embarrasement or blushing (red faced)
赤色 - red color
vs
赤裸々- naked, nude (or unvarnished truth, or frank)
赤道 - equator or (zero/null? line)

I think you are just much more familiar with the color “red” usage. But the nuance in usage allows for a “bare” or “naked”. Again I don’t like to argue. I’ll just stating my own understanding of the word. You may need a better dictionary that have a better range.

Culture typically assigns certain color to some concepts. And then from there depending on the context, some word will become associated. It’s like the color “blue” used to stand for pornography when I was growing up, as in “blue films”, so as kids we’ll speak broken English in my region where we use “blue” to connotate the perverse and obscene.

It happens in English, but in the chinese/kanji, it’s even more flexible. So a single character in standalone usage can seem meaningless to a foreign speaker, but it conveys much more.

I hazard to guess how chi (赤) became a “null” number plate is because it can stand for “red marks” as in failing marks, which then is not a far jump into “zero or null” marks.

The equator is 赤道 which if literally translated into English means “red” “path”. Which clearly does not make any sense. But it’s zero in latitude, which makes sense if you’re familiar with how 赤 can be used.