Japanese Students/Fluents, Give me Your Advice!

try to use imagery, ie imagine what the kanji is trying to mean, that should help you to read and recognise them but it can take forever. parts of the radicals that make up the word should also help you understand their meaning; one radical tends to be associated with plants, another with metals, another with water etc.

for memorisation, you're just going to have to do lines of the same kanji while saying out loud the meaning or pronounciation, that's how us orientals learn our kanji in school and even my parents learnt them that way 50 years ago. when you feel confident about a set of say 5-10, test yourself and go over the ones still giving you problems.

Jam it back in, in the dark.