find a place with high q soil, water, a clay node near, has access to rivers, a big space where you can freely expand, etc etc.
Worst piece of advice ive ever seen, chances are that if you do manage to find high q soil someone will already have claimed it, same with clay nodes and any other node or that people will visit them regularly.
Access to rivers ? Most hermits die that are closer to the water because raiders and asshats use them as highways.
A big space ? Good luck finding a big space, when i went looking for a place to build a quiet hermitage the area was covered with villages and other established claims. You would have to be pretty lucky to find a wide area that hasnt got a claim nearby.
My advice is to stay away from the water if you can help it, go to fish by all means but just dont hang around longer than needed.
Personally i believe that if a newb at this point in the game finds a decent node he wont be keeping it for long, if someone finds out you have a node on your claim and if theyre powerful enough they will burn your sleepy hermitage to the ground to get access to it.
I built my claim in an area where :
there are no nodes - Only 20q soil, this means i have less chances of people coming to my claim to collect from nodes, it also means that the area is useless if you want clay, stone etc so it lessens the chance of people coming for that reason
fairly away from villages - to prevent the chances of random villagers wondering by my hermitage.
Fairly away from water - Its not smack bang next to water so some wondering asshat can see it plainly andthink "il remember that claim for a later raid".
Look at the things you need to build a palisade, and work on it as soon as possible - meanwhile you can pop a claim up, build a house and put your hearth fire at the entrance so only you can enter.
EDIT-
"In character form not letters"
Thats exactly what chinese, Japanese symbols are, "characters" specifically called , Kanji, Hiragana, or Katakana - the Chinese just use a form of Kanji.
Search on the internet, Hiragana and Katakana, you should see a table (it will look similar to the alphabet and may give the sounds in English alphabet) if its hiragana or Katakana i can help you translate them but if its Kanji your better off contacting "TonkyHonk"(i suspect is Japanese), send them a pm and a screenshot of the message if you really want to know what it means.
If its Chinese i cant help you, but send me a screenshot by pm as i know a Chinese guy that might be able to translate it.
I wouldnt try to worry too much about the runestones either look at all the crap people write in English on them, although it could mean that your neighbors might not be able to speak English, this could create difficulties as it would be easier to just pwn you rather than try to communicate (i could be wrong).