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

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 が.  FYI, the other 2 are 烈 "ardent" れつ and 徒 "junior" と.

Last edited by CharleyGarrett (2006 July 26, 11:49 am)

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.

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

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

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!

Last edited by PepeSeco (2006 August 14, 8:13 pm)

Not really sure why, but my favorite is 義.

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.

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

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

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 ^__^