If you visit 壊す (こわす) (to break something) on Wanikani they will give you this mnemonic:
“The thing you broke? A beautiful ceramic koala (こわ). Watch it shatter to the ground, because you threw it there.”
And that’s great, but you know what’s better? Seeing that koala with my own eyes. I typed this into [craiyon](https://www.craiyon.com/) (a free mini version of DALL·E):
“koala made of porcelain, broken into shards”
Waited one minute and I got these beautiful broken koalas:
[https://i.imgur.com/mwkK0yh.png](https://i.imgur.com/mwkK0yh.png)
Then I chose my favorite one or two of those and pasted them onto my Anki card for 壊す. It’s really vivid and helps me visualize the mnemonic more clearly.
Here’s another one: the kanji 墓 means “grave” and according to Wanikani is made up of the radicals for “greenhouse” and “dirt”. What is a grave doing in a greenhouse? I don’t know, but here it is:
[https://i.imgur.com/K8smdMC.png](https://i.imgur.com/K8smdMC.png) (I like the middle one the best)
I could do this all day. It’d be fun to make a database of these and share them with others. Before it didn’t seem remotely feasible to create images for every single common kanji, because there were so many, but this really changes everything!
15 comments
[deleted]
A link to the site discussed:
https://www.craiyon.com/
Great idea!
Sounds like you’d be spending a lot of time that you could instead have been using to learn kanji in context using immersion.
That’s a really clever idea tbh
Also if you do end up making a database of such images for several Wanikani kanji, I’d be interested in participating. I could even try to make a script that fetches the image in the database and displays it into the “Mnemonic” section of WK
Do you think maybe you risk going too far with the mnemonics? “OH I REMEMBER! That’s the broken panda! Now what is the meaning and reading…”
Johnny Mnemonic vibes. If craiyon doesn’t work out, seek help from a talking cyber-dolphin.
LMAO
just use google images(or whatever search engine you prefer)
i guess some people would rather look at creepy psychedelic ai generated images rather than study though.
This was how I learned hiragana/katakana back in the day.
コ looked like the mouth of a coach yelling at you.
あ looked like a guy doing a T-pose on a surfboard and screaming “Aah!”
む was a cow pooping.
This is great and I’ll definitely use it. But I don’t think I’ll need actual visuals for kanji such as 判 (Judge)!
Omg that’s so cool
I just use my mind to picture what the kanji means. More quickly than typing and wait to get images.
But looks interesting to use it with a bot
Fantastic idea! Thanks for sharing!
I was a little more direct with my prompt and I’m really happy with the result. It basically came up with [a shrine in some water for 水.](https://i.imgur.com/6Qe1vr7.png)
Amazing idea. Good job OP!