In 2008, during my college vacation, I started and finished reading James Heisig's book, Remembering the Kanji. Learning all the Kanji is the most challenging part of learning Japanese and Heisig's method is perfect to teach foreigners their first 2042 characters. (It goes beyond the old 1945 常用漢字)

To help me remember everything, I chose Anki, the best Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) available. Spaced repetition is a technique for reviewing Flashcards that makes it even more powerful.

Two weeks ago, I decided to start studying again and I found my old Anki deck. It has a great layout with some nice features that I'd like to share with you. I have tweaked it a little and now it has:

• Reviewing the Kanji integration, to help you with your stories.
• Story hidden by default, visible only when you mouse over the keyword.
• Stroke order when you mouse over the Kanji.

If you want to replicate my deck, click at Browse, select your deck and start by adding the following fields:

1. Kanji
2. Keyword
3. Story
4. Heisig number

Then click at Cards... and change the Front Template to:

<span onmouseover="javascript:story.style.color='#000';" onmouseout="javascript:story.style.color='#FFF';">{ {Keyword} }</span><br/><br/>
<span id="story">{ {Story} }</span>

Then Styling to:

.card {
    font-family: arial;
    font-size: 20px;
    text-align: center;
    color: black;
    background-color: white;
}

#story {
    color: #FFF;
}

#kanji {
    font-family: arial;
    font-size: 150px;
}

#heisig {
    text-align: left;
}

#heisig a {
    font-size: 14px;
    color: #777;
}

And Back Template to:

{ {FrontSide} }

<hr/>

<span id="kanji" onmouseover="javascript:kanji.style.fontFamily='KanjiStrokeOrders';" onmouseout="javascript:kanji.style.fontFamily='arial';">{ {Kanji} }</span><br/>
<div id="heisig"><a href="http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/{ {text:Heisig number} }">#{ {Heisig number} }</a></div>

Don't forget to remove spaces between { {Field} } (sorry, there's a problem with my syntax highlighter) and to install the Kanji stroke order font v3.000.

After that, it will look like this:

And like this, when you mouse over it:

I hope it helps on your journey!