What about 莫迦
Back when I learned that one I kinda just was like “ok” and was too lazy to look into the details, but now I’m kinda curious and at work so I can’t really look into it too deep
馬鹿 is described as ateji, and 莫迦 is described as on’yaku, which is “phonetic representation of a foreign word using Chinese characters”.
I’m not really sure what the difference between 当て字 and 音訳 is in practice… maybe just context.
So, once again, not that exciting. They’re used for their sounds.
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I love kanji because I also learn about the culture this way! And sometimes the kanji’s meaning is really funny or predictable if you look at the forms. It surprises many times!
But its also hard and I am only level 8, so what do I know lol
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Kinda like pianos
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You don’t need to be passionate about Kanji… You can be passionate about reading. Wanting to read Japanese is what kept me motivated to learn Kanji as reading kana-only text is very unpleasant and unfeasible. I like to think of Kanji as “part of the world’s most clunky writing system” as Jay Rubin wrote:
Kanji are tough. Kanji are challenging. Kanji are mysterious and fun and maddening. Kanji comprise one of the greatest stumbling blocks faced by Westerners who want to become literate in Japanese. But kanji have nothing to do with grammar or sentence structure or thought patterns or the Japanese world view, and they are certainly not the Japanese language. They are just part of the world’s most clunky writing system, and a writing system cannot cause a language to be processed in a different part of the brain any more than it can force it to some other part of the body (excepting, of course, Lower Slobovian, which is processed in the left elbow).
Perhaps looking at the origins of particular kanjis would give you some motivation? The Kanji 止 originally depicted two footprints (of someone who had stopped). If you like stories like this, check out https://kanjiportraits.wordpress.com/
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One thing I love about kanji is how they allow the same word to be spelled different ways to give a different inflection. It’s fun to come across a familiar word spelled with a new kanji.
Wanikani contains the example 生まれる / 産まれる but there are so many more.
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Nope, I’m Professor Layton-like
I really love the feeling when I learn a new set of kanji for a level, then get fed back a vocabulary word that I was already familiar with, but didn’t know the kanji for. It goes from “oh, I memorized that word,” to “oh, that word makes sense!”
Airplane isn’t just ひこうき hikouki; it’s also 飛 hi, and 行 kou, and 機 ki! I knew the word before, but now I understand it, and going from there to here is fun for me.
Another fun, albeit rarer moment, is when you come across a word in the wild, and are able to guess which kanji it’s written with. For example, just the other day I happened to hear that there is no 43rd room in the OB sections of Japanese hospitals, because it makes people think of “stillbirth.” At first that seemed a little random, but I thought about it for a moment, and then it clicked: the problem was that 四 shi and 三 san were being associated with 死 shi and 産 san.
Even if I happened to know beforehand that しざん shizan was the word for stillbirth (which I didn’t), without knowing the kanji, I probably wouldn’t have ever associated it with room number よんじゅうさん yonjyuusan. Kanji adds a whole extra layer to vocabulary, which lets you think about things in ways you can’t with English. Little moments like these give me an appreciation for learning kanji.
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Here I am 3 months later, and I just wanna say…I love the concept of catching wild Kanji with a Kanjiball to fill out the Kanjidex. Your other thoughts are excellent too but that one is gonna stick with me 
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