Since Japanese uses three different writing systems interchangeably, even yamato kotoba can be written in several different ways. For example, the word "sushi" can be written entirely in hiragana as すし, entirely in katakana as スシ, in kanji as 鮨 or 鮓, or in ateji (kanji used only to show a word's pronunciation and not its meaning) as 寿司 or 壽司.