It was horrible. Every mnenomic referenced a man named Yugo, who was said to be Kouichi’s uncle, but no one really knew. Every entry had something about the pain in his left foot and how it wouldn’t go away, even when it wasn’t helpful.
I don’t know how we ever learned everything, but I still have dreams about Yugo.
A typical entry:
跡
“This kanji means [traces]. In it, you can see [red] and [feet]. What has red feet? Why that’s easy! Yugo, after walking his feet down to the bone after a long day in the salt mines of his home land. Picture the [traces] of the bloody tracks Yugo leaves. He never stops talking about it.”
“This kanji is read せき. You know who [say]s “[key]” a lot? Yugo, when he’s outside the house my family is forced to share with him, demanding to know where we’ve left it. We always we mean it, this time he can’t come back. He carries on reeking of liquor, moaning long into the night about his bunyons and sores. Eventually it starts bothering the neighbors, so we have to let him back in, but … Ah, anyway, try to remember it means [traces]. I’m so exhausted.”
It was a nightmare. I’m glad they finally changed it.
I’ve still never seen him or any video of him. If a Japanese friend were to ask me if I know of him, I’d probably say “Yeah, he’s the guy from WaniKani.”
The old radical names are so burned in my brains, I just make up my own mnemonics using them these days cx I don’t know, replacing something memorable like ‘sauron’ with ‘net’ just doesn’t work for me! But well, at this point, I guess it doesn’t matter for me anymore either xp
