literally my favorite kanji. it’s the one i always write when my japanese kids wanna see me write kanji haha. some random words that come to mind:
魔女
魔法少女 heh
魔法
魔法使い
魔術
魔術師
悪魔
next up
薔
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It looks like a medieval soldier, with a goatee and a helmet ! Can you see it, too?
I will probably remember it because of this 薔薇戦争 (ばらせんそう) which is the vocabulary for the famous “war of the roses”
Next Kanji is: 覡
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How could you forget 魔王！
覡
Never seen this one, but definitely the word is familiar. The ‘see’ radical makes sense, and the other parts feel like constructing something out of bones. Nice kanji!
Next: 爺. Somehow I really like the shape of this one.
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Welcome to the community @alisora!
Even though the 漢字 isn’t familiar to me (it’s a 表外) the word お爺さん is.
Next up: 架 (which kind of goes along with the last one)
@Saida I was editing my post - I accidentally hit post too soon.
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You forgot to put a new kanji. Or did you accidentally publish?
Yeah, sorry, only later did I realize you only posted a second ago.
担架の架なんですね。Another word with the same reading is 短歌, a type of poem, like a haiku, but with two more 7 mora lines. I calligraphied one once, got me second place behind @ShinobuSagi:
木の間より
もり来る月の
影見れば
心尽くしの
秋は気にけり
Next up: 唄
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唄 is a fairly recent addition, not being present in extensive dictionaries such as Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100 CE). It appears to have been constructed to provide a phonetic approximation of the Sanskrit word पाठ (pāṭha), meaning “recitation” or “recital”, particularly in the context of sacred texts.
In modern-day Chinese, it describes Buddhist chanting. This may explain its late genesis; it is thought that Buddhism made its first forays into China during the first century BCE (or, rather, the last century BCE), but it took a few centuries for it to really catch on.
In modern-day Chinese, it is also used for its phonetic value to express what Wiktionary calls a colloquial particle “indicating obviousness or grudging agreement” (something “duh” or “Errrm…”).
In Japanese, its meaning has transformed somewhat; from describing traditional chanting in a religion originating in India to describing Japanese folk music, particularly works performed on the shamisen.
Next character: 恭
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I don’t respect it. Maybe because it looks like a bug and I don’t like bugs. Maybe because jisho says there’s somehow the 心 radical inside it and I don’t like being lied to. I’ll accept it, but I won’t respect it.
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Yes we can! 似てるじゃん。
So… Wolf Eriksson likes their kanji to be as tightly woven as a viking’s beard eh?
What a surprise. Vikings riding flocks(?) of dragons. 意味ん (I mean) those 龘 d-d-dragons are going… somewhere, with booming voices going（音）「トウ」. Tō where?
峠
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I learned this kanji because of a bus I rode which had a stop named 東山峠. Sure enough, the stop was at the summit of a big hill.
Next kanji: 東
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東 is often described as “the sun rising behind a tree”, but this is either a folk etymology or a reinterpretation of an already existing kanji.
東 originally represented a bag tied at both ends, and meant “bundle” (similar to 束, which maintains the meaning of “bundle”).
However, because it was a homophone (or near-homophone) of the word for “east”, and perhaps because “east” is difficult to draw, it was given this new meaning.
Continuing with the directions: 西
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験
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This is my first reply on anything ever so I might be doing this wrong. However I know that 験 is in the word 試験 so I hope that this fits. I remember this kanji because of the 試験 word, and my hatred for exams.
next kanji: 鳥
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(Dude your pfp is Dōgen-san! I found him literally the day I began studying Japanese back in March. You gave me a flipping heart attack thinking that he for some reason lurks these forums Σ(°ロ°) )
I don’t get why I can cook the 鳥 but I can’t flip the 鳥. These animal rights activists sure need to get their priorities straight. Also, the kanji looks like it’s defecating from below itself, which seems legit according to what I’ve heard from beach-goers.
Next kanji 腰
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This immediately takes me to the lyrics of a karaoke song in 龍が如く 維新！
＜剣をふりふり 男だね＞
＜腰をふりふり 祭りだね＞
＜さむらい音頭で踊りましょう＞
Clearly our friend Majima knows how to shake his sword and his hips.
Next:
如
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to be honest I really can’t follow Kanji right now hahahaha
A simple kanji, yet relativity uncommon. Most of the common words that might possibly use this kanji are kana words.
Some exceptions are:
如し adverb, like, as if
如実 ultimate reality
But my favorite one comes from the Portuguese word for watering can, “jorro”.
如雨露
Yes, this is usually a kana word. But “like rain tears” is so very descriptive!
Now I must leave you with a complicated one:
露
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This is the kind of visually-complex kanji that terrifies beginners, but is actually pretty tame once you have some background.
The top part is 雨 as semantic, indicating some connection with the weather. And the bottom part is 路 as phonetic, which thankfully gives the shared reading ろ in Japanese. (This in turn is made up of 足 and 各.)
Together we get “dew, expose”, as well as being borrowed as the abbreviation of 露西亜, Russia.
This leads us to a kanji that is perhaps better known for its borrowed meaning than its other meanings:
亜
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亜 is an interesting one. It means something like “sub-” or “coming after”, and is used in words such as 亜種 (subspecies). However, as you suggest, it is perhaps better known for its use in ateji to represent the sound あ, such as in 亜細亜 (アジア) and 亜米利加 (アメリカ).
Speaking of 亜細亜, that’s quite an interesting word in and of itself. When we hear “Asia”, we tend to think primarily of East Asia, so we might expect that this word would have its origin there. However, this word originally referred the lands east of Greece, Aseweja, which in turn likely comes from the Hittite word Aššuwa, referring to northwest Anatolia. So, the word that we associate so closely with China, Japan and Korea may originally have referred exclusively to a small part of Turkey.
This practice of naming something after one of its parts is called pars pro toto. Other examples are referring to the Netherlands as “Holland”, referring to the UK as “Great Britain” (or even as “England”) or naming all of Scandinavia after Scania (the southern tip of Sweden).
Let’s continue with … 米
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Which means rice and is read as こめ. Coincidentally “comer” also means “to eat” in Spanish. So even if those two words aren’t related it makes for a good mnemonic. 
We’ll keep with the food and continue with 飯
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Food language acquires a wealth of associations outside of food. On it’s own as a word, this kanji is 飯, a male word for cooked rice. (language scholars, how did men get their very own word for rice?) But we see it in a whole bunch of very common words for meals. ご飯, 朝ご飯, 昼ご飯, and many more.
My favorite words, though, is what happens when the rice goes cold:
冷や飯 cold rice, hanger-on, disgraced former actor
冷や飯 くい, hanger-on, dependent
冷や飯 草履 , crudely made 草履 with straw thongs
Try tracing the history of this one:
人
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