Smell, taste, pain, everything I think.
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I would say association is stronger with you. I’m not sure if it’s anything wrong per se, but more something that sticks out for you. Anyway that is neither here nor there.
This thread is about aphantasia. Not members diagnosing others.
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Sounds like an approach thing then. If you have strong photographic memory, you should be able to come up with ways to leverage it 
In the case of writing, it might be the act of you writing the kanji or you associating specific parts of a kanji with everyday items (which I guess is how you did it, considering you mentioned leader and Jourm’s stick being X feet high?).
I just did one of the aphantasia/phantasia tests and there is a set of very specific things I can’t imagine in a creative way, but a lot of them are just snapshots of things I have seen in my life. Not sure if this is actual imagining or just recall of images from memory. Weather conditions and people are a no go. Shops, landscapes, cars, etc. very vividly.
It definitely is. I can trick myself into believing I’m eating a specific food, for instance. Not sure how this works for others.
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I was trying to be ironic. I don’t think there is something wrong with me.
I just realize more and more that most of the people don’t write,
that makes it difficult to share experiences about recalling Kanjis.
I am now sure, that for the purpose of recalling (to write) visualizing does not work for me, but very condensed mnemonics do.
That’s what I wanted to clarify for myself because the OP suggested, that it might be necessary to imagine Jourm in a way.
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I see.
I was unable to write kanji before I took on a project for Tofugu to draw the radicals as SVG graphics. Spending the time drawing each stroke in Adobe Illustrator made the radicals stick visually in my memory. After that, the kanji that I already “knew” suddenly started becoming clearly recallable visually, because I had previously memorized them as superpositions of the radicals, but I couldn’t (before that) recall exactly how the radicals were drawn.
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I meant all else aside. Aphantasia or no aphantasia, given no other conditions, recognition is automatic. Obviously “all else aside” is an oversimplification considering how varied people are, but that was my point.
Certainty. There are so many senses and factors that can impact recognition, and the combination and strength of each is probably different for each person.
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True, that’s how I also remember Radicals of course.
It is the Kanjis with a lot of radicals that are becoming blurred in my visual memory.
But after recalling them with mnemonics for a while they stick somehow and I don’t need the mnemonic anymore.
But the process is much faster and stable for a longer time than what I can achieve without them.
I just remembered that I had a dream a few days ago, where I saw many Kanjis in the sky, one of them being clearly readable 夢.
The others blurred once I focused on them.
In a way that means there is some visual memory I have of Kanjis but I cannot access it directly.
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I’m not an aphant, but since I rely very heavily on phonetics to memorize stuff, I ignored the WaniKani mnemonics (especially the Jourms and Kens, etc.) and instead tried building stuff based on sounds, like:
ちょう would mean “long”, “important” or “big” (in the sense of being noticeable, not “big” in size)
長 is the core kanji here (also a phonetic component in other kanji)
a 鳥 (ちょう) with a long neck is a swan (白鳥 - はくちょう). It doesn’t matter how a swan looks like. It’s important that it’s a bird with a long neck.
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Wow I’m completely mind blown right now. I had no idea. I only knew people can imagine music because some of my friends constantly have ear worms and I probably have one once every few years and that’s without background music or a real melody? Like its more just a text part that’s stuck in my head for a few minutes before I concentrate on something else. I’ve always thought I don’t have them because I’m just not good with music.
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That works easy.
I just tested to sing in my head a line from a Bach cantata
and the first words are my voice and then it changes to Andreas Scholls (which is definitely more beautiful 
)
Actually that might be the reason why I hardly turn on music.
I have the record inbuilt 
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Yes, memory is difficult to understand without some neuroscience or neural network background. Universally, it is a superposition of experiential ‘aspects’, much like radicals within kanji. The problem is that recall is not exactly a real thing. Rather, ‘reconstruction’ is what really happens. That is why “recognition” and “recall” are separate skills. Recall is actually peformed by a different set of neural circuitry than what we normally think of as memory itself. And, actually, recall is a form of memory, but it must be trained separately from what we normally think of as memory. (Sorry… the neuroscience stuff is sneaking out 
)
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And here I am struggling to remember a time when I sung “Happy Birthday” to get the melody of that song 
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Actually I don’t think very high of materialistic neuroscience.
Far from it.
If you call that “tuning in” I can agree with you.
And yes, you can train that. It is like to change the focus of a camera to the DOF you want to tune in to.
Because you use the wrong songs!
Try that:
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I just discovered that I probably have Aphantasia like 30 minutes ago. But that makes so much sense in hindsight. I remember when I was younger and reread a book after watching the movie and I was slightly disturbed that I suddenly had the memory of a face for the characters while reading. And I realized that while reading the book for the first time before seeing the movie there was just nothing? I just shoved the memories from the movie aside and continued reading while not imagining anything and the world was right again
I’ve never thought this was weird
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Once I stop the video the only thing about the song I can tell you is that he is singing: Wiederstehen doch der Sünde" and that the voice was nice. I can remember myself watching the video and therefore try to remember the melody but that’s it. If I try to disconnect it from the memory of watching the video its just my voice in my head reading: “Wiederstehen doch der Sünde” like reading a newspaper headline.
I heard that song many many times, it takes time.
Not for me. I’ve only listen to music I bought and I have one playlist with about 50 songs that I listen to nearly daily. I bought a few CDs in 5th grade. And I often hear one song for hours.
10 years later and I could probably tell you the lyrics in a relative monotone voice if I’m lucky
If about 1000 hours of listening to a song is not going to get me there I doubt anything else is
I’ve never bought new music for that reason.
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I think it is really about the type of music.
So upon further reflection of my reading behavior and reading descriptions how reading is for other people I can safely say that apparently that doesn’t really work for me while reading either
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