Meaning: sun, day, Japan
Readings: ひ、か、ニチ、ジツ
My hack: OK, this is supposed to look like the sun (a circle with a dot in the center), just squished into a rectangular shape. To me it looks just like a window, so I try to imagine that it’s really sunny outside this window, and the focus of this kanji is the white part, not the black part. You have to be careful that you don’t start thinking that it means “window” though!
Through the window by Tambako the Jaguar via Flickr
UPDATE: Here’s a visual for those who like the calendar idea. Thanks, Krystian!
Photo by Andreanna
It looks like one of the boxes on most calendars representing a day (the ones that have the number of the day in the month and sometimes names of national holidays). Well it’s more like two boxes, but as Japanese has no plurals, you can just as easily hack it in by thinking that this kanji means “days”, and that will be true as well. ^_-