米

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rice

On-Yomi: ベイ、マイ、メエトル — Kun-Yomi: こめ、よね

Elements:

rice

Heisig story:

This kanji has a pictographic resemblance to a number of grains of rice lying on a plate in the shape of a star.

Heisig comment:

* As a primitive, it keeps its meaning of rice, and is meant to connote a very ordinary, commonplace grain, in contrast to the primitive for wheat that we just learned. (This meaning accords well with Japan, where the output of rice far exceeds that of wheat.) It occasionally takes a different shape when it stands on its own, or is joined to a line above. In this case, we shall have it refer specifically to grains of rice. This primitive is not to be confused with the similar-looking primitive for water. While the stroke orders are nearly alike, grains of rice has 5 strokes, while water only has 4 because it joins the second and third strokes into one. Finally, we may note that by itself the kanji for rice is an abbreviation used for the United States, which can then also serve as an alternate reading for the main primitive form, if you so wish.

Koohii stories:

1) [fuaburisu] 10-10-2005(154): Stroke order: I like to think of the first two strokes as “chop sticks” with which one eats the rice. The rest then is the “tree” meaning “plant” in this contexct. also: USA.

2) [meolox] 19-12-2007(52): Two drops of rice in a tree, simple.

3) [inaka_rob] 17-4-2012(23): 88! Japanese people think of this Kanji as 88. Each grain of rice holds 88 gods inside. Anyway, that is the origins of this kanji. It's easy to remember: Each grain of rice holds 88 gods. 八十八 written as one character. just remember one 八 is upside down.

4) [ziggr] 29-9-2006(10): Avoid rice-grains in stories that use the full 6-stroke 米 , use cups of rice instead. Reserve rice-grains for the abbreviated 5-stroke version as in lacquer (#932 漆)漆 and Esq. (#933 様)様.

5) [rinkuhero] 20-9-2011(9): Rice grows on trees in America.

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