Anyway, the answer section has 3 links. The “Denji Jisho” link will go to jisho.org, which has stroke order pictures for each kanji. OR, you can download the Kanji stroke order font  and then go to Deck properties> Basic> Edit>Forward>Card Layout>Fields>Kanji>Font and choose your font.

You can download the kanji font here sites.google.com/site/nihilistorguk/ first link. Unzip it and read the directions. I just had to click on the font file and it did it automatically, but I don’t know if it does that on every OS so make sure to read the about/help files if clicking on it doesn’t install it. 

The kanji has the same font color as the background. The red (which are numbers right now) or the picture are hints. Ideally, you want to write the kanji just by looking at the hints. For example, if you look at that screenshot, you’ll see tiny red 4, because it’s the kanji for 4. For mouth, you’ll see an image of a mouth. Later on, the hints turn into RTK-style sentences.

So yes, it’s normal. Keep doing reps and you’ll see what I mean.

And yes, you’re supposed to write it out when you test yourself. 

I think – but I’m not completely sure – that the lazy cards means having the question be the kanji and underneath it on the same side the RTK story (or one you made up) with the answer blanked out, and then the answer side of the card has the meaning.

You don’t need to worry about making the lazy deck anyway! Just go to Anki (I’m guessing you have anki), go to File>Download>Shared Deck, search for “lazy” and download the pre-made deck called Lazy Kanji Mod V2. Someone already went through the trouble of making the deck, so why not use it?

Actually, on the sidebar of AJATT (down at the bottom), there is a section called Web Dictionaries. jisho isn’t on there because it’s english-japanese (and back) only, no japanese-japanese and Khatz recommends only using monolingual. However, I find that using a bilingual dictionary is easier when trying to figure out which word you heard. The english ones also accept romaji, which is easier to use when guessing because then you don’t have to worry is a ji is a じ or a ぢ, a zu is a ず or づ. Romaji dictionaries account for that. Even though I know kanji and mastered the kana a while ago, I often use romaji for lookups because of the easiness of it.

I do recommend using an actual monolingual dictionary (such as the ones on the sidebar) for the actual SRS cards though… 

So it might be hoho, hohou, houho, houhou, and possibly hooho and hohoo (having two o’s is actually pretty rare in japanese. They usually use ‘ou’ to make a deep O sound). The better your listening skills, the more easily you can tell if it’s a short o (like in hoho) or a long o (like in houhou).

So anyway, after you’ve written down all your guesses for that word you recognize – which will usually be just one or two guesses, you just go on an online dictinary and put in all your guesses. I recommend Jisho or WWWJDIC (just google for them). Look at all the answers and pick the one that fits with the context you saw it in. If multiple of them fit, see if one says “common” and the others don’t. Go with common.

Then take that word you chose and make a card for it. You can use sentences from jisho and WWJDIC, just be sure to look them over to make sure they seem accurate, or from other places. Then you go on a japanese online dictionary (like sanseido) to get definitions for all the words in that sentence that you don’t know. Try to use simple sentences so you only have 1 or 2 definitions in a card. 

 That’s all there is to it: recognize a word; write down all the possible romaji/kana writings for it; use an english dictionary to look up your gueses; choose the best guess; make a card with japanese sentences and japanese dictionary definitions; repeat until you are fluent.

I recommend Azumanga Daioh as a good starting anime. It’s not the most interesting anime, but it’s funny at times and the vocabulary’s pretty easy. That or the younger-audience Ghibli movies (Ponyo, Spirited Away, Kiki’s delivery Service, Karigurashi no Arrietty). Turn off subs, or get one with foreign subs, you’ll recognize more because you’ll listen for more. I recognized a lot more words (that I knew and didn’t knew) when I watched Arrietty with arabic subtitles than when I watched it with English subs. I can’t wait for it to be released here so I can watch it with no subs at all. When you get tired, feel free to use song lyrics sometimes too as at least then the words are found for you.

from: Overview

So it’s not so much that he doesn’t recommend learning kana first, he just doesn’t think it’ll be that useful if you’ll be spending time learning kanji. However, it’s not like it’ll hurt if you learn kana first. What matters is that you learn the kanji before doing sentences.

I too already knew kana well before discovering AJATT (and some 150 kanji, as well as a bunch of grammar and vocab from my textbook days). I did adapt Khatz’s method. I learned the kanji, not through Heisig as I dislike his chosen interpretations, but I use a kanji game called slime forest to achieve the same result. In the meantime, I also gathered sentences (without really SRS-ing much, really just gathering for later) from japanese students’ workbooks of various levels.

Sometimes I even go back to the textbooks. I find it FUN to read them every now and then- I’m one of those freaks – and Khatz always says that having fun is the most important aspect of learning a language.

However, doing kana first can be a motivation booster.  I learned kana before ever discovering AJATT so yeah…one interesting thing you can do with only kana though is…you can play Pokemon! 😀  Most of the GBA and DS Pokemon games are entirely in kana.  Sure, you won’t understand anything, but you can just read it in your head, which can be fun.  At the very least, you’ll learn all the Japanese Pokemon names and how to say Attack and Item and Run and stuff.

In case you were confused, vocabulary should be learned at all parts of your Japanese journey (following Khatz’ system, that is.) Through having Japanese audio on all the time, you’ll pick up on words and phrases as effortlessly as picking fruit off of trees. When they say you should learn vocabulary after kanji, I think they’re referring to *written* vocabulary. I could be wrong though; that’s just my two yen.
 
Our wise friend ahndoruuu is exactly right on all points, however, I did deviate from Khatz’ Master Plan(TM). I decided to learn the kana first, and chose to do some singular word learning before really getting into sentences. The reason I did that was because I needed some extra time easing myself in. I wanted to see Japanese with my eyes, so I decided to learn the kana before finishing the kanji. After finishing the kanji, I started sentences, but I was sinking. I figured I needed a leg up, so I decided to work on some vocabulary before launching into sentences, as well as when I got going.
 
In my opinion, my acts of deviance have lead me down an easier path to fluency, but also a longer one. That’s okay though; I’m a slow learner, so I need a slower pace anyway.