wraith depot
Testing yourself on the meaning of words is what we recommend. We don't recommend trying to remember meanings of individual kanji. Because they don't really mean anything on their own. It would be like trying to "learn" latin suffixes in English. It makes much more sense to spend your time just learning words and then you learn to recognize kanji naturally.
Handwriting isn't a good use of time until you're already fluent if you have an interest in it. If you're planning to go live in Japan, you don't really need to be able to write much except for your address and name, basically.
