5

Times


Radical Combination


Meaning

Times, Revolve

Mnemonic

There's a mouth inside a mouth. But if you look even closer (not actually, but we're pretending), you can see another mouth inside that mouth... and another one inside of that one! It keeps going and going. Can you count the number of times there's a mouth inside a mouth? This kanji also means revolve too. Think of each "time" a thing happens, it loops back around and comes back to the beginning, revolving around again another time.

Imagine yourself counting and counting smaller and smaller mouths inside of each other, recording the number of times you can find a mouth inside another mouth. Dig deeper and deeper until it feels ridiculous how small the mouths are getting. Be sure to focus on the counting and the number of times you find one. Now, how many mouths is this times two, because your mouth is like this too.


Reading

On'yomi

かい

Kun'yomi

まわ

Nanori

None

Mnemonic

If you're having a hard time wrapping your head around the infinite number of times these mouths revolve, just picture yourself in a little kayak (かい) going around and down through the mouths.

Your kayak is slashing and dipping through the revolving mouths, going down and down more times than you can count!


Found In Vocabulary