LOL it’s so funny cause that’s how I memorized the Kanji I and totally thought that was the normal way to look at it, I told my Japanese friends too and they were like “holy shit”
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I just realized Nekomaru from Danganronpa 2 might possibly be a reference to Maru the cat from those YouTube videos. My life won’t ever be the same.
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Maybe not mind-blowing, but it was pretty cool to realize that 東北 (which I knew from the earthquake) meant northeast. And understanding that あたまがいい literally means “good head” was also neat. I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that it sounds similar to “tamago” or if there’s any connection with the expression egghead?
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Yea, it’s cool to see,
頭がいい: good head: smart, clever
頭がわるい: bad head: dumb, slow
I love it because it makes the vocab so easy to remember 
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I just heard that Inception sound in my head when I read that, though I know it’s not true…
國 is the traditional character and that is not a ball inside there.
Your realization is still really interesting though! A great way to remember that kanji.
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Just a coincidence?
水＋海 ＝ 湖
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No not a coincidence, it’s exactly what it means.
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Don’t forget 頭が固い, meaning thickheaded / stubborn.
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Oh nice! One more to my Anki vocab deck haha
Haha I totally do this too!
I know it’s pretty basic, but after a lot of studying and reading from different sources, I finally made a clear separation between the は and が particles: は is a contrast and topic particle, whereas が indicates the subject of the phrase. It’s so simple, yet so useful to making complex phrases.
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I have been following an evening course of Japanese for two years now, so I know some vocabulary without knowing the kanji (we are super slow with the kanji…). And so I knew the word for a microwave oven 電子レンジ and now in WK I got to 電子 and had a proper mind blow 
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I saw this at a pedestrian crossing: 歩行者
It makes so much sense that “Walk go person” is a pedestrian! xD
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I recently rewatched all of the anime Wolf’s Rain in English (Don’t judge me! It was the only version I could find with good quality) and stumbled upon some Japanese I hadn’t picked on before. Be warn this contains spoilers though:
When they meet another, albeit imperfect, person like Cheza in Jagura’s city she refers to her race as Hanabito, which I immediately realized meant flower people. Which if you’ve watched Wolf’s Rain extensively then you know Cheza is a girl created from Lunr flowers. The rest of the dialog has been in English, but they kept this one word spoken in Japanese to make it sound like a cool made up race, when in fact it was a fitting descriptor in Japanese. Thought that was cool and felt awesome I picked up on it.
Another example came when I was rewatching the anime DNAngel - in Japanese this time - and caught a joke that wouldn’t make sense without me know some Japanese. The spoiler is very minor but I’ll blur it just in case:
There’s a part where the main character, Daisuke, has his pet change into a doppleganger of himself to take his place in after school punishment with the girl he thinks is he crush. Well the doppleganger can’t really pronounce his name really well and ends up say “daisuki” to the girl and it comes off like he’s saying he really likes her apron and by extension her lol.
Sorry all my realizations are very specific anime examples haha, but what are ya gonna do? I’m in a “watch all the anime from my youth” binge, so I’m sure I’ll see a bunch of others as well.
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Never really thought about it, I just saw that the Red Cross is called 赤十字 in Japan, the “red ten character”. Cross itself is also 十字, so basically “something that looks like ten”.
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After the second or third planet, I realized I already knew what element would be associated with each because of Sailor Moon!
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I had been self-teaching kana for a couple of months a while ago and gradually I had started to become lazy and use roumaji again because I kept thinking how difficult it would be to read and remember all these characters.
To mitigate this, I decided to practice by going to a local Oriental supermarket. You’ve probably seen some of the heavily stylised fonts and calligraphy on Japanese food packaging, it’s somewhat difficult for a beginner to read.
But to my surprise I effortlessly began reading the kana as though it were the Roman alphabet (didn’t understand the vocabulary though 
) I didn’t need roumaji anymore (except for the occasional bout of laziness)!
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I just realized that よく when used as an adverb is just conjugated いい. I literally just realized that. I actually thought that よく was just a separate word just to contrast あまり. I was just sitting in class thinking about it and it hit me like a wall of bricks. To think that I knew to bring 速い to 速くfor an adverb and not いい to よく…
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And あまり is just a version of 余る (to remain, to be in surplus, to be too much)
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welp, I think that’s enough mind explosions for the day. time to pack it up boys.
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