The first example (tree represented in Japanese) seemed a bit misleading, because the "alphabet" has not been kept as a constant. Since the Japanese alphabet is much larger, it may be argued that the number of bits actually occupied in storage by "本" and "tree" are about the same. Could someone clarify if this is correct reasoning?
Certainly, and I deliberately didn't get into bytes and encoding until after this - I was trying to get across the softer idea that in terms of space-on-a-page-using-a-pen, you've saved.
