Can you interpret the asian writing on the bowl?

Mods, I have no idea where to put this so please move to wherever is best.

I posted this in yahoo answers, and received no responses. I guess I had put it in the wrong catgeory. Anyway, it should be very easy.

I have a few larger bowls for eating noodles or soup. Picked them up at an asian grocer long time ago. I am way too ignorant to know what asian writing it is (is that even a correct term?). I am assuming Japanese or Chinese (my ignorance). It would be interesting to know what I have been serving my food in all these years.

Anyway here are 3 shabby images. Can you interpret them for me?

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Take care,


[edit on 10/23/2008 by Stockburn]

They are all Chinese, but the Japanese use the same characters for simple words like this. The first one (with the two dots on top) is the character for flower (花, pronounced "hua" in Chinese). The second (with the four vertical lines crossed by one horizontal line on top) is the character for snow (雪 'xue). The last one (the two vertical lines inside two horizontal lines, with one of the lines curved at the end) is the character for moon (月 'yue'). If you'd like to look it up, here's a good Chinese-English dictionary that lets you draw what you see to find the characters: www.nciku.com...

Giving this one last shot at an attempt for translation. Someone here has to be able to read the bowl? Ugh. Now that sounds stupid.

Care and luck,