Pretty simple really. Post your favourite kanji and explain why. Is it the look, the meaning, the story you made up for it... ??

For me it's either 四 or 五.

I learnt how to write 1-10 years ago off a school friend from Hong Kong and 四 was the first character I mastered (1-3 not really being a challenge!) and something about it really interested me. When I started learning the Kanji last year all the memories came back so it's a special one for me. Typical it's an unlucky number in Japan...

五 is my choice for looks and writing. Something about writing it makes me smile. Perhaps it's because it's one of the few kanji I feel I write 'properly' ie. comes out looking right and not some weird mah of lines.

Hmm I guess I'll have to let you choose multiple kanji for different reasons

I really like 藤 (ふじ、トウ）, the kanji for wisteria. Because it looks elegant, and I remembered it almost instantly, despite its many strokes. It illustrates for me why Heisig works so well. Besides, when I sit behind my computer at home, to study kanji, I look out over my own wisteria.

My favorite kanji is 我. I like the way it looks, sort of round, symmetrical in a way but not too symmetric. And I like the way the pen moves around when you draw it, constantly changing direction, each stroke ends up different from all the others. Beautiful...

My favorite is 茶, probably for it's symetry. Amusingly, I can't come up with a story that I like enough to use.

mine favourite is 羊 i like how a big sheep is considered a beauty add to that that i like those fluffy animals

ergerg Wrote:My favorite kanji is 我.

This is also my favorite, for many of the same reasons. In addition, I had a friend make up a 3 kanji group for my surname---Garetto--- and this character "ego" can be pronounced [kana]ga[/kana]. FYI, the other 2 are 烈 "ardent" [kana]retsu[/kana] and 徒 "junior" [kana]to[/kana].

Wow - just realized that I joined this club a long time ago. Oh, my favorite is "harmonious".

[ファブリス]

Great topic!

Hmmm... where do I begin? There's so many kanji I like.

I can't really think of one that I like most, but 藤 is also a favorite, because of the primitives "quarter" and the simplified version of 水 that Heisig calls "rice grains".

Some of the radicals I enjoy writing most are :
金 (in compressed form on the left), 雨 "rain", 羽 "feathers" (especially compressed) , 隹 "turkey" (old bird), 耳 "ear", 門 "gates", 氏 "family name", 鳥 "bird", ...

I quite like the "pent in" kanji, because of the square shape, in particular : 圏 (there's "quarter" again and it's nice flow).

Some of these are fun to write, and also have a square arrangement : 能, 熊 (ah, the "cooking fire", the chinese write it as one horizontal stroke in simplified form, I'm not sure but I hope they have the 4 strokes in calligraphy version), 疑, ..

The simplest and most elegant for me for both its meaning and shape is 山 "mountain".

And one radical that I like a lot but still struggle to write is "path/way" as in 送. I did it only two or three times at calligraphy, and I just can't get a nice flow with a pen.

From your avatar, I thought you'd like 五 the best.

leosmith Wrote:my favorite is "harmonious".

Ok, here's harmonious: 欒 I love it because of it's symmetry and intricacy. It comes from a vocabulary word of mine, danran (団欒）, which means "sitting together in a circle; happy circle; harmony"

I also like apple: 檎 I like apples, and I can just see that silly villain, standing next to a tree, under an umbrella with elbow tucked in his belt ala Al Bundy. The compound is ringo (林檎）

Are these in Book3? I don't have that book.

Everyone is obviously much further through the book than me so I reserve the right to add to my list as I discover more!!

Mine is "biang," as in the noodles popular in China's Shaanxi province. It contains 57 strokes (yes, 57). Unfortunately I cannot write the character here as it is not contained in any font.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biang

Matthew Wrote:Mine is "biang," as in the noodles popular in China's Shaanxi province. It contains 57 strokes (yes, 57). Unfortunately I cannot write the character here as it is not contained in any font.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biang

Wow!!! We should start a topic for making up stories for that character

Well, I'll join the 藤　club! There's something particularly satisfying about writing that kanji and it happens to be pretty too. I also like kanji that include the primitives 言, turkey or fiesta, as they seem to flow really well.

The "biang" one is really cool, although somehow it's a little disappointing that it's a kind of noodle. It seems that it should be something really dramatic! Incidentally, following links from that article was how I initially came across this website. Can't find the same links today though... :/

The Heisig method is really amazing! I have looked at the biang character and I do not think that it looks difficult! Because of its simmetry I think I would transform it into a chess position and make a story out of it:

If one takes the *cocoon*-*long* combination to mean "chess bishop" (because of its long reach) and the *words*-*team of horses* combination to mean "interlocked knights" then the biang character can be read:

house+animal legs (pawn running home about to promote),
moon, bishop, interlocked knights, bishop, saber,
heart, road.

So it is about a chess position under the moonlight, sharp as a saber, that almost costs you your heart while on the road. All along you were sucking biang to keep you going and when you finished the game you were so exhausted that threw up all the noodles on the chessboard with a loud Biang!

ファブリス: thanks! I made the change!

[ファブリス]

PepeSeco: I think it's not "elbow" but a pair of "cocoon" as in the character for faint. I'll have a go at it later as well, fun!

Not really sure why, but my favorite is 義.

生.

It pops up all the time and has a nice flow to it.

我 - as another poster said, this one is quite fun to write.
物 - this was my favorite kanji from my pre-RTK days. because it really does look like a "thing" some sort of tentacled octopus-like thing.
警 - this is a favorite of mine for proving the greatness of the heisig method. before RTK it looked hopelessly complicated and squashed together... now it's quite simple.
厚 - this is my favorite for explaining the method... because the story given in the book is so humorous.

風 - It's really simple, but I love the shape for some reason.

[ファブリス]

I'm still a big fan of 藤, especially after checking them out in Japan. They were just beginning to bloom at the end of April when I left. I noticed there were the same flowers (wisteria) near where I work, really fragrant. I'm not sure the Japan ones are much different, but it seemed like everywhere I go there were flowers. There was a large bed of 藤 at the ByoudoIn temple (hope I got that one right, I mean the temple on the Japanese coins). I photographed tons of flowers while in Japan

For asthetic reasons similar to 我, I dig 凝. And thanks to Heisig it's a cakewalk to tear it apart and learn it.

I personally like 葉 myself - looks nice to me with the flowers/generation almost locking into place with each other.

It seems a bit japanophile-like but my favourite kanji before I started Heisig was sakura (桜). The reason was that when I started trying to learn Japanese many moons ago I came across an old copy of Nihongo journal trying to sow how easy it was to learn kanji if you associated them with an image.

The image for sakura was a beutiful woman in a kimono with a decorative hair-band (top three strokes) standing next to a tree.

This was over ten years ago and yet the image remains with me, and in a way proves to me when I start to have doubts that a system like Heisig's can and does work if you work at it.

胆　

ok, not actually my favorite...but an important one for RTK...it's the one people get to before they have completely bought into the RTK system and say "Why I am learning 'gall bladder' and not something useful"

If you can get someone past gall bladder anxiety, then maybe RTK is for them ^__^

My current favorite kanji would be 裁. I'm currently working on that lesson (18, I believe), and somehow it feels like I'm finally getting to those interesting, complex characters that look impossible to learn at first glance. Also, there are many beautiful and interesting strokes in it.