Off with the training wheels

Well, after a few days of having the mnemonic story on the question side of the Anki card, I decided last night to remove it... partially. I actually made the story's font color white, so that it was "invisible" on the white background of Anki. This way, all I have to do is highlight the text with my mouse to make it visible; a bit crude, and I'm sure I could code a more functional method, but for the time being this works nicely. I was considering simply moving the mnemonic to the answer side, black text, but I had a tendancy to focus on the mnemonic story and give it priority over the kanji keyword, or the kanji itself... which is why I ultimately decided that this method wasn't for me.

So, off goes the training wheels, and I feel like I'm really back on the right track. Perhaps it's a bit more work, but I can feel the cogs in my head getting a much better workout, and I'm quite certain that this will prove to me more efficient in the longrun.

On a sidenote, today I'm taking a break from listening to Japanese TV while conducting my reps; it's actually become quite distracting to me as of late. Incidentally, as I understand it, this is a great sign, as while I'm beginning to learn more and more of the language, certain words or phrases will pop out at me and attract my attention! At the same time, this has seriously been impeding my SRS progress, so... for today, it's music. Tomorrow I'll return to Japanese TV and radio, but I'll try my best to remain focused on Anki. But good lord, I thought American TV shows were loud...