﻿ That's no kanji, that's just a hairball | The Japan Times
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button  Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006   That's no kanji, that's just a
hairball  So, how's your kanji study coming along? What? You've
been slacking off? Well, me too. And I have a good reason:
hairballs. Any Westerner who has studied Japanese kanji has had
hairballs: those things that result when you start to write a
kanji, usually one you've written a thousand times before, but
suddenly you stop and think -- which radical goes with this
kanji? Was it "hito ben" or "ki hen"? Hito ben, you decide, and
write it down. But then, no, no, you remember it was ki hen, and
you write over the other with the new. But then, no, no, it
turns out you were right the first time -- it was hito ben!
Scribble, scribble. And you write in hito ben again. What's left
is a large, undecipherable scribble that looks more like a
hairball.  News photo A typical "gaijin"-made kanji hairball
The obvious solution is to vacuu