Everyone, what’s your strategy for dealing with animals and vegetables kanji ? There is such an endless stream of kanji for tree, flower, fruit, fish, insect, bird, everything under the sun really.
I’m not sure where to draw the line, almost all of them are usually written in katakana… but not always. (For example, the supermarket near my place throws non-WK, non-joyo kanji all over, especially where place is limited, like tag)
I learn the ones I like. I ignore the rest.
If it ever becomes relevant to me, I’ll get them through exposure (like 茄子 or 柚子)
So, I heard you like weird kanji without furigana.
I’m currently reading エクサスケールの少女 and boy oh boy are you in for a ride.
(It’s SF, but 40 pages in I have yet to see something SF really happen).
My fav non-joyo and yet without furigana kanji so far:
黴 mold
That being said, it’s almost on WK: it’s the ばい in ばい菌
(you should also see the words that do get furigana)
I’ve seen this kanji without furigana on a VN before 
I didn’t know it was in 黴菌, though. Looks good.
Some weird ones I’ve seen recently (also without furigana) include 藪 and 壜 (thanks @Belthazar for teaching me to do that)
Both in 新世界より?
藪 was in 新世界より, but 壜 was in a VN called Planetarian (which was surprisingly difficult for me).
Oh, I’ve heard of that. One of the games from Key. Nice. 
This is just BS. The book I am reading has been using
齎す to bring along
and
孕む to conceive
without any furigana. Come on…
Gotta learn them some time. 
Interestingly, I have はらむ (in hiragana) in my review queue in floflo, and it’s not giving me too much trouble. もたらす sounds a lot like 持つ, and with the context it would have been easy to guess the meaning. So just giving me furigana the first time around would have been okay. But the author just thought that, nah, people reading their book must be sophisticated enough to know those readings (both kanken 1 kyu… well, maybe @Leebo will learn those someday)
臥薪嘗胆 （がしんしょうたん）has to rank up there for one of the most interesting 四字熟語. Found a literal translation of “臥薪” = “sleeping on firewood.” and “嘗胆” = “lick the bitter animal liver” . One way to take the meaning is " great perseverance" , or " Able to withstand the hardships for the sake of future success."
That’s 蕎麦 and 麺
Just learned 天狗 (てんぐ）and by extension a new kanji 狗 for dog. 
Bought some Japanese candies, and some were soft candies with little flavored jelly candy bits in them, with 4 different flavors in the package. All the flavors were written in kanji rather than kana. Which was particularly surprising when I looked up this one: 珈琲 (coffee). Phonetic kanji, the individual kanji are (according to jisho) “ornamental hairpin” and “string of many pearls”. The other kanji were all WK kanji, except for strawberry 苺. I was definitely surprised to see both of those written as kanji rather than kana.
薪 (まき) - firewood 
I naively thought 憂鬱 was one of it’s kind kanji, but today I met another good one, 鬣 : mane (of horse) (and I also learned the English word “mane” 
)
Also, now that I started to dive into native books, I’m quite surprised at the big number of alternate spelling that are used for basic words… In 30 pages, I already encountered 眼 for 目, 眸 for 瞳, 解かる for 分かる, 逢う for 会う, 脊中 for 背中, 厭な for 嫌な…
But the most hilarious one was 沓を穿いていた. After scratching my head and checking the dictionary, both kanji are actually alternative spelling, and the sentence is actually just plain 靴を履いていた…
They often have different nuances though, which makes it interesting.
I recently learned this can also be read たきぎ. I don’t know which is more common, but it’s interesting because it’s one of those cases where they take a word that looks like it’s going to be written with kanji X and Y and write it with another completely different kanji. In this case, seeing the hiragana one could guess it would be written 焚き木.
I really like words like this. Other examples include 厩 (stable) and 掌 (palm of one’s hand, this one is even here on WK). Granted, these two can also be written, respectively, 馬屋 and 手の平, though.
Just came to say this thread is awesome, although I cannot really contribute at this moment. It’s not like I’ll remember much, I just like looking at kanji you don’t see everyday.
I was really proud that I new the meaning of かび (黴) a few posts back, because of hearing it in the first scene of the anime toradora years back, until I learned that its a really common word, just written in hiragana most of the time
Oh, I love those! I suspect that also includes 湖 (a lake is a “water ocean”?) and 偏る, which can also be written 片寄る. For that one I actually used 方 and 寄る as a mnemonic before realizing it was a valid way to write it.