Let's say I see the word: 銀行 and want to look up the first character. I notice that the left hand side is 金 so I go to a dictionary, turn to the kanji radical

Let's say I see the word: 銀行 and want to look up the first character. I notice that the left hand side is 金 so I go to a dictionary, turn to the kanji radical section[1] find 金 and then find the original character by number of strokes[2]. This character has 14 strokes. If you have any experience with kanji then counting strokes is pretty trivial. Also note that on the site linked to common kanji have a red background. Many of the characters are obscure so radical + stroke count narrows done the choices to very few kanji. [1] https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu.html https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu.html [2] https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu08002.html https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu08002.html