Just a note to let you know that the Kanji podcast for Lesson 6 is uploaded and available!
Important note: I somehow completely missed the kanji 「国」 in this podcast. Here is how you should learn this kanji:
Kanji: 玉
Reading: たま
Meaning: "ball", "sphere", "jewel"
Form: This is the kanji for "king" （王） that we have learned before, with a dash added in the lower right. The dash is supposed to represent a large jewel on the king's finger (historical derivation), or if you want to use the more common "ball" meaning, you can think of the king out shooting some royal hoops, dribbling his basket ball.
Vocab: Actually, most balls used in sports are called ボール, so you won't be using the word 玉 very often, except in proper nouns like 二子玉川（にこたまがわ）, an area of West Tokyo.
If I were a much more rude, crude, and lewd Japanese teacher, I would tell you that 金玉（きんたま） is a Japanese slang word for "testicles", but I'm not, so I won't tell you that.
＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
Kanji: 国
Reading: くに、コク
Meaning: "country"
Form: This is the 玉 kanji above, inside of a mouth. To remember this kanji, you might want to keep the image of the basketball-loving king wandering throughout his kingdom (the borders of which are represented by the enclosing box), looking for the perfect one-on-one game, but always frustrated by the fact that nobody wants to risk beating the king, and so always loses on purpose.
Vocab: This is obviously the コク in words like 中国 and 韓（かん）国, as well as 外国 and 外国人、 discussed in the podcast. くに is the word for "country", so you might use this word in phrases like 私の国では… and the like.