I was intrigued that #Japanese has kanji for very large numbers (like 極=10^48), so I wrote a blog post about it. It's a story of counting systems, an Edo-era mathematics text and Buddhist scriptures, with a supercomputer and a samurai, so it might even interest you if you are not studying Japanese ^_^
http://quickandtastycooking.org.uk/articles/japanese-large-numbers/