米 Rice

Radical Combination

• 米

  Rice

Meaning

Primary

Rice

Alternative

America

Mnemonic

The rice radical and rice kanji are the same in looks and meaning. This kanji can also mean America, maybe because America is covered in rice or fields or something?

Hints

Aren't radicals nice? As nice and as fundamental as… rice. They make things so much easier, if you've been studying them.

Readings

On’yomi

べい, まい

Kun’yomi

こめ

Nanori

None

Mnemonic

A ton of rice is grown in America. And yet you never see rice in American cuisine. So where's all that unused rice going? Actually, it all gets dumped into a big bay (べい). They have too much rice and no place to store it, so they've started using bays to store it.

Hints

Imagine helping to bulldoze the rice into the bay, watching it fill it up, then pile high. A bay isn't the best space for rice storage, but it'll do. The important thing is that you think you have way too much of the stuff, so the only way to get rid of it is to dump it in a large body of water, and that large body of water is a bay.