In the "perverted stories" thread, Terhorst posted the most complex kanji most of us have ever seen:

Terhorst Wrote:OFFTOPIC:

ivoSF Wrote:i remember once having seen a chinese kanji for some kind of noodle that has over 100 strokes

I thought someone might be wanting that one, so I made this avatar a while back:

I'm going to have nightmares about this! What's the meaning?

Better still, what's a good Heisig story?

It's the character used for Biang Biang noodles.

Praise for finding it first belongs to other people on this forum.

yeah that is the one, not exactly 100 strokes but still a wooping lot

while traveling down a ROAD on your way to the BIANG BIANG noodle restaurant, you see a HOLE. you peer inside and what do you see? SOCRATES sitting atop a HORSE flanked on each side by two COCOONed creatures that are very LONG, one wielding a MEATY drumstick, the other with a SABER. It is so exciting that your HEART begins to beat rapidly.

Here's my try at a story:


You take a bowl of Biang Biang Noodles and dump it on the ground. A dark Hole appears on the ground beneath you. As you fall, you notice glowing Words rush by you (like the Matrix, but in reverse) in the dark.

Through them you see a vision of two Cocoons. They are so Long they are being pulled by a Team of Horses.

Your Heart starts beating so hard it hurts -- it's both halves of the legendary Moon Sabre! (Each half of the Moon Sabre is hidden inside a cocoon.)

You are no longer falling and find yourself on the Road before them.

[ファブリス]

This came up before in the "Killer kanjis" topic with a couple photos.

Also in the Favourite Kanji topic.

Feel free to bring back those threads to the living, they're fun!

But is it a kanji? Most Chinese fonts don't even have it.

johnzep Wrote:while traveling down a ROAD on your way to the BIANG BIANG noodle restaurant, you see a HOLE. you peer inside and what do you see? SOCRATES sitting atop a HORSE flanked on each side by two COCOONed creatures that are very LONG, one wielding a MEATY drumstick, the other with a SABER. It is so exciting that your HEART begins to beat rapidly.

Now I couldn't forget this kanji even if I tried .

johnzep Wrote:while traveling down a ROAD on your way to the BIANG BIANG noodle restaurant, you see a HOLE. you peer inside and what do you see? SOCRATES sitting atop a HORSE flanked on each side by two COCOONed creatures that are very LONG, one wielding a MEATY drumstick, the other with a SABER. It is so exciting that your HEART begins to beat rapidly.

Ha ha. You've ruined it. Now it's too easy... only problem is fitting it into the little grid box in the kanji practice pad...

[ファブリス]

Exactly. In fact I find the kanji in Megaqwerty's avatar more complex, because it is mostly asymmetrical, and it doesn't correspond to Heisig's primitives either!

Okay who wants to have a go at that one then? I can see some starting points, but it definitely requires a bit of creativity in the central section.

Incidentally, what does it mean? It's presented as a bitmap in the avatar, so I can't copy and paste it to find out.

Floatingweed5 Wrote:Incidentally, what does it mean?

According to Wakan, "lottery, lot, raffle", with the only word given that uses it being 貧乏鬮 (びんぼうくじ), meaning "unlucky number, lbank, bad bargain." IME lists the last kanji as hiragana when converting the word. Go figure.

[Katsuo]

Megaqwerty's kanji 鬮 is simple in one way, which is that it's made from only two radicals: nos. 191 鬥 and 213 龜. But both radicals themselves are quite rare.

鬥 is related to fighting, and 龜 is a variant on tortoise.

Here is a movie drawing radical 213 (old tortoise). This character has quite a few variants though, and there are other ways to write it.

If you are interested, here is a page of drawing movies for rarer kanji from the same source. The main site is here.

Katsuo Wrote:Megaqwerty's kanji 鬮 is simple in one way, which is that it's made from only two radicals: nos. 191 鬥 and 213 龜. But both radicals themselves are quite rare.

Yeah, you're right of course. They're all easy when properly broken down. I had a go at coming up with a story last night, but it was too late and I got frustrated. I had actually broken it down into the two radicals that you mentioned, but fell apart when trying to rationalize the second radical (213).

I'm sure that someone with a deeper knowledge of rare radicals could rationalize it easily, but that's not me. As Megaqwerty points out, it would just be an academic exercise anyway, as that kanji is just not going to be encountered in a modern text.

Hey Katsuo, you seem quite knowledgable. Have you decided to take your kanji learning beyond the "practical-use" Japanese kanji, or are you maybe studying to achieve Chinese literacy?

Katsuo Wrote:Here is a movie drawing radical 213 (old tortoise). This character has quite a few variants though, and there are other ways to write it.

Interesting, now I can see some "Heisig Primitives" in the kanji. There's a simplification in the middle, next to the sheaf / Wolverine primitive, reducing the number of strokes and making it easier to draw. Well, I'm still far from finishing the RTK book, but here's my attempt to create a (somewhat violent) story for Megaqwerty's one (鬮) with what I have so far:

"Two kings with giant walking sticks - the right one has a barb at the end to differentiate - won the raffle and got tickets to watch the punishment of a prisoner: he is bound up and has his mouth pierced with a walking stick and a fishhook (just look at the way the "mouth" is written because of the damage), and with two tridents* he is pushed to fight Wolverine". I imagine something like "walking the plank" and a gladiatorial fight to go with this.

* My primitive

Edit: I didn't see that there's already a lottery in RTK 3, so I changed it to raffle in my story.

johnzep Wrote:while traveling down a ROAD on your way to the BIANG BIANG noodle restaurant, you see a HOLE. you peer inside and what do you see? SOCRATES sitting atop a HORSE flanked on each side by two COCOONed creatures that are very LONG, one wielding a MEATY drumstick, the other with a SABER. It is so exciting that your HEART begins to beat rapidly.

version 2...I think a small improvement for the "long" primative.

while traveling down a ROAD on your way to the BIANG BIANG noodle restaurant, you see a HOLE. you peer inside and what do you see? SOCRATES sitting atop a HORSE flanked on each side by two COCOONed creatures, their LONG fangs are visible under the cocoons. One creature is wielding a MEATY drumstick, the other has a SABER. It is such a sight that your HEART begins to beat rapidly.

[Katsuo]

Floatingweed5 Wrote:Hey Katsuo, you seem quite knowledgable. Have you decided to take your kanji learning beyond the "practical-use" Japanese kanji, or are you maybe studying to achieve Chinese literacy?

I've learnt the 3007 kanji in Heisig's books and added another 341 using the method. That's about enough now, I think, as it's become rare to encounter kanji I don't recognise.

I'm not studying Chinese; I like the mix of kanji and kana.

Coming back on topic, (sort of), it's not the Ultimate Kanji, but if anybody would like to learn a really complex character which is actually useful, try 鬱 (29 strokes, meaning: depressed, in low spirits). Heisig includes a variant of this kanji, 欝 no. 2856 "depressed", but 鬱 is the more common version.

why even bother making a story for that lol i got 900 more kanzi to study... brb

Wikipedia has a Heisig-style mnemonic traditional song for remembering the writing.

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

The wisdom of old!

Thought I would revive this thread with a fun kanji I saw on the side of a lucky pig at Chinese Cafe 8 in Roppongi. If you haven't eaten there, I suggest you check it out. The duck is great, and the decor probably deserves a thread all of its own...probably on a different site...yes...very...面白い.

Back to my point, the kanji, any takers as to meaning? Is it even real?
I took this with my mobile phone so the quality isn't the best but I think it should do.