I now have two of you on my f-list who're (more or less) starting to learn Japanese, so I thought I'd write some short lessons from time to time. Here's the first mini-lesson, an explanation of how kanji actually work, it got a bit longer than planned but I think I covered everything.

1. Usually in Japanese, what comes before describes what comes after. Meaning:

— An adjective comes before a noun, ("red dog", not "dog red")
— Verbs are described by who/what is doing the verb ("dog eats", not "eats dog") or when/where/why/how they take place ("tomorrow ran"; "ashore ran"; "quickly ran"; "it rained so i ran"; and not "ran tomorrow, ran ashore, i ran because it rained" etc)
– If there is ever a change in word-order it's either because there's a change in focus in the sentence ("I ate" = the point of the sentence is to describe the eating; "ate, I" = the point of the sentence is to describe me) or the person is just talking without thinking "I went there and got it for you. uh, because i was worried, I mean.")

The same is true in kanji words:

金魚　キン ギョ　"gold(en) fish" = goldfish (fish that is gold)
人魚　ニン ギョ　"human-fish" = mermaid (fish that is human)
子犬　コ イヌ　"child/offspring-dog" = puppy (dog that is a child)
人犬　ヒト イヌ　"human-dog" = dog that is a human (it's not a "real" word according to the dictionary but it means a person who's being kept as a pet like a dog. you'll find this word in manga sometimes, ex. in Violence Jack)

If this doesn't seem to make much sense, there can always be missing grammatical words in-between (as that's how Chinese works apparently) meaning usually "at the same time, along with". These are relatively rare to see though:

夫妻　husband (and) wife
妻子　wife (and) child
上下　up (and) down
大小　"big (and) small" = sizes

Otherwise you might mistake these as meaning "a wife that is a husband", "a child that is a wife", "a down that is an up" and so on.

2. Always remember: Kanji originally come from Chinese, and written Chinese was never meant to have a specific pronunciation. You were simply writing down "ideas", not "specific words and grammar", and so you were supposed to be able to write or read ANY language in Chinese characters and then "translate" it to your local dialect / language when speaking aloud. In Japanese, yeah, sure, most kanji ended up getting narrowed down to having just 1-2 pronunciations but it still means that 95% of the time, the meaning of the kanji is far, far more important than the pronunciation.

In Japanese, the same kanji even changes pronunciation depending on the meaning in the sentence or word. For example:

止める：
— ヤめる stop yourself (from doing an activity, ex. "cut it out!"), resign/quit from something, ex. from a job.
— トめる stop something else ("help! stop the car for me!")

開く：
— ヒラく open something: for intangible stuff & anything that doesn't open straight right-to-left or up-to-down as in a sliding door or sliding window, ex. flowers, envelopes, doors or windows that open on hinges.
— アく "open" as in 1. straight right-to-left things, 2. devoid of something: 1. (western-style) books, (sliding) doors and windows. 2. empty houses, untaken seats, uncrowded (= devoid of people), job openings (= devoid of workers)
 
行った：
— イった "went" (modern Tokyo-area dialect)
— ユった "went" (old or other dialect)
— オコナった "was held, got performed" (an event/experiment happened. kinda like how we say "it went wrong".)

And the same pronunciation but different kanji is used to narrow down the meaning of that spoken word:

キく：訊く asks, 聴く listens/hears, 聞く asks or hears, 効く is effective
シロ：城 castle, 白 white (thing)
ヤむ：止む stops (apparently about something that'd been going on for a while, ex. rainfall ending), 病む gets sick
ヤめる：止める stops itself, 辞める resigns/quits from (ex. a job)

Meanwhile even if you don't know the pronunciation, if you know the meaning of the kanji, basic grammar, how kanji words are normally formed, and you have context, you can usually still figure out a new word:

病気　ビョー キ "sick-mood" = sickness
病状　ビョー ジョー "sick-situation" = status report about a sickness (= health condition)
病む　ヤム gets sick

今日　キョー　"now/this-day" = today
今月　コン ゲツ　"now/this-month" = this month
明日　アシタ　"morrow-day" = tomorrow
明後日　アサッテ　"morrow-after-day" = day after tomorrow

Now, in manga they do this same kind of thing more often and with more meaning: they'll write a kanji for its meaning and change its "pronunciation" to literally whatever they want by adding tiny hiragana or katakana to the sides of the letters. This is usually either for jokes or to teach the kids a "cool English word" that means the same thing.

For example 私 "I, me" (and in compound words "private" as in "private school, building not for the public"; it can have a ton of different pronunciations actually), can have the pronunciation ゴッド "god" if a god is talking about themselves. This by no means means you should memorize ゴッド as an actual pronunciation of 私. Likewise 悪魔　アクマ "demon" might have the pronunciation デーモン "demon". That's really just one more example of why knowing the meaning is much more important than the pronunciation.

3. Most of the confusing kanji words are actually just MISSING 1-2 kanji, because they're shortened forms compared to the original idea. The problem is, the dictionary isn't going to give you the full form. For example:

消防　ショー ボー　"extinguish-protect against". This means "fire-fighting".
消防士　ショー ボー シ　("shi" as in "sailor senshi"!) "extinguish-protect against-warrior". This means "fire-fighter".

We're simply missing some kind of kanji for "fire, flames": 消防[火]士 for example (火 meaning fire).

敵機　テッキ "enemy-machine". This means "enemy aircraft". The little pause ッ is a sound-change from テキ キ (the real sounds of each kanji) being put together, because the i-sound often disappears at the end of a word (sounding like "tek" instead of "teki, and they can't say "tek ki" right after each other clearly so it becomes a short pause instead).

It's actually a shortened form of 敵 テキ "enemy"　飛行機　ヒ コー キ "fly-go-machine" (= airplane): 敵[飛行]機

少年　ショー ネン "few-year" = boy
= 少年[男] "few-year-boy"

少女　ショー ジョ "few-girl" = girl
少[年]女 "few-year-girl"

悪魔　アクマ "evil/bad magic" = demon
= 悪魔[獣] "evil magic beast"

制服　セー フク "system-clothes", uniform.
= 制[度] 服[装]　セー ド フク ソー "institution-outfit/costume"

販売機　ハン バイ キ "sale-sale-chance" vending machine
= [自動] 販売 機[械]　ジ ドー ハン バイ キ カイ "self-move sale-sale big-tool device" automatic vending machine

人力車　ジン リキ シャ "human-power(ed)-wheel" (rickshaw)
= 人力車[乗物]　"human-power(ed)-wheel(ed)-ride-thing" = human-powered wheeled vehicle.

Sometimes the entire kanji word is like a shortening (even if the pronunciation doesn't match):
自動車[乗物] "self-move wheel(ed vehicle)" = automatic wheeled vehicle (automobile)
= 車 car

4. Sometimes a word seems to not make much sense but you have to think back to when the word was first imported in order for it to, ex. cigarettes and trains back in time were a bit different than modern ones. I don't have any real examples of this but ex. there's differences between 汽車 "steam-train" and 電車 "electric-train" (= the term for all modern trains). 車 "wheel" is again just short for something like 車乗物 "wheeled ride(able) thing" here.

5. Relatively VERY few kanji words are selected for the kanji's sound alone, and have absolutely nothing to do with the kanji's meaning. You'll notice these easily because the kanji's meaning simply won't make any sense, and in fact they often have pronunciation help/furigana even in novels for adults and stuff (for all I know it's actually a law, because some super common ones will still have pronunciation help). Most of them are written in hiragana or katakana nowadays (in newspapers, 50+ year-old books or stuff like that they might still be written in kanji) or have even been replaced with completely new words. Some examples, I can't think of any actually common ones right now:

アメリカ　亜米利加: the USA
コーヒー　珈琲: coffee

These types of words are called "ateji" (even when writing in English about them) and they're one of the biggest complaints people have about learning kanji, claiming you can't ever know any meaning or pronunciation for sure. Except like I said, there's actually almost none of them in normal use. If you ever need to write one of these in kanji form for some reason, just write it in hiragana exactly like you would in katakana and hit the space bar (so こーひー or あめりか + hit space).

By far most kanji only have 1-2 pronunciations you ever need to care about, all remaining pronunciations are exceptions to the rule and most kanji that DO have frequent exceptions are the same few kanji over and over again and are simply really old kanji.

Well, that's it! The "secret" to memorizing kanji is in another post I already wrote before (a few entries back, about memory aids) but just need to fix up a bit so that it's clear that kanji are made up of parts and aren't just totally random lines.