At what point do you stop writing your vocab words down during reviews? I read that beginners should write down all the words that they study, and that's what I've been doing. It slows me down a lot but I've noticed I am a lot more comfortable writing Japanese than I was before.

Every time I review, when I do a vocab word I write down the kana, then if I know the kanji I write that too. Sometimes I even conjugate it in long form if it's a verb. I think I've gotten comfortable enough with writing that I can drop this habit, unless there's some reason I should write the vocab word down.

And how about RTK? Do you always write the kanji down? I have been because I don't trust myself. Sometimes if I just imagine the kanji and then show the answer, what I imagined may have differed slightly, or I start to question what I had imagined and then I'm not sure if I was wrong. I just write it down every time so that I am absolutely sure if I knew the kanji or didn't.

I'd like to hear what others did when they were beginners.

I wrote the kanas out non-stop my first couple months. I don't typically write down vocab as I study it anymore, but I know that there are people out there that like to. It depends on your preferences and goals.

When I first started, I wrote out vocab for about the first three months and then realized that I created a lot of bad habits by copying non-handwritten fonts. In case you have learned this yet, some computer fonts differ from how things are written out. The two on the right are the handwritten forms. The third one is the one I usually use in my flash cards. http://i50.tinypic.com/3veya.jpg

For RTK, I have two Anki decks. I started the first one about a year before the other, and I don't write anything down when I use it. Front side is keyword. Back is kanji. This deck uses a kyoukashou handwritten font, and all I do is piece the kanji together in my head. The second uses a stroke order font, but it is the same layout. For this one, I write them out and make sure my stroke order was correct.

It mostly comes down to preference, goals and what works for you. If you don't want to write them down, don't. If you try that and feel you need to start writing them again, then go with that.

I never wrote down vocabulary words, and usually just visualized or "wrote" the kanji on my hand when drilling RTK.

For me, my recall is better if I write the words out. I used to do this all the time for the first 2500 words from core. I know those words really well. The last 1500 or so though I didn't do it and it shows in my retention rate. I still write them down when i first encounter so i can study through the day but the continued exposure to writing the words helps. Also it translated to me doing better in my Japanese classes in Japan because we were required to write essays without a dictionary for test. It does take longer and I initially stopped because of time. I personally find it better to go at a slower pace because the writing helps me.

For RTK I was writing the kanji out (or using the Embedded Scratchpad on AnkiMobile) but now the Scratchpad is kinda borked (on Anki 2). So now I either visualize or write them out, depending on how I feel that day.

I'm also going through Core, vocab recognition-style first. So if a card says

逃げていた犯人が逮捕されました。

I should think [たいほ] and [arrest, capture]. I have my leech threshold set at 5. Whenever a card becomes a leech, I unsuspend its Transcription card, which looks like this:

{{sentence audio}}
逃げていた犯人が[••]されました。

and I write [逮捕]. I'm not really a beginner (got through Genki I-II and AIATIJ) but I forgot lots of vocab >_>. Recognition-only is handy because I can do those cards anywhere, but I remember words better when I write them, so. =/

For me, new vocabulary or words I can already quite easily produce (in writing) will stay in kanji, all the others have to be written out. Below is an incomplete sentence but basically...

This... (BACK)
相当する機能は全て数式で記述されるにすぎない。

Turns to this (FRONT)
相当する［きのう］は全て［すうしき］で［きじゅつ］されるにすぎない。

I think it kills two birds with one stone--two flashcards in one.