So two things jump out at me... the first, is there's two halves of remembering new words. There's how often you use them/review them (anki helps with this a lot) and then there's how you get it in your head in the first place (anki doesn't help with this at all). You're going to want to learn new stuff throughout your life, so this is a good chance to start exploring different sides to how you learn. Have you used memrise before? I don't use it personally (way better to make your own associations and memory tricks) but spending a few weeks on a japanese memrise course might help show you what sticks and what doesn't. If you can find a copy, read "Fluent Forever". It might help you with your approach. Also, if this memory stuff sounds interesting to you and you'd like a little bit of an introduction to memory work in general, go to the library and see if you can find a book "Moonwalking with Einstein". It might give you some new ideas for better ways to memorize. At a certain point, just reviewing a bunch isn't going to help, you know? You have to work smarter, not harder.

Second... the more exposure you have to actual stuff, the more vocabulary you'll learn. I find I learn things easiest by reading. Having a flash card with a japanese word on one side and the english word on the other is kind of like level 1 (not so helpful). Having a card with a japanese sentence on one side and either pictures or an english sentence or something on the other is like level 2 (getting better). Actually seeing your new word every few days in a totally different, natural sentence... that's level 3. That's when the word really starts taking on a life of it's own, and getting some depth and color. Japanese is a little tough because the written language is so much harder to look up with a paper dictionary, so reading paper books/manga/videogames might be a little tough starting out. If you happen to have one of the more recent kindles, you can read japanese books with a built in dictionary so you don't actually have to look anything up yourself... just highlight the word you don't understand. There's tools that will help you do that online too if you don't have a kindle, then the only challenge is picking good books you're interested in. It might be frustrating at first, so depending on your vocabulary, you might be better off starting with a graded reader or something, but if you spend even half an hour a day reading, it'll start feeling more comfortable fairly quickly.

Why are you interested in japanese by the way? Or rather... is there a lot of japanese stuff you like to read/watch translated? Anime, videogames, etc... if there is, you can start working towards watching/reading/playing that stuff in the native language. Anything that you're excited to be doing will make it much easier to stick with. Classes can be helpful, but if you actually start working towards using the language for fun, you'll make much, much faster progress.

Also, if you aren't used to using native material yet... don't try and learn every new word. Try and learn a new word only after the third time you've seen it and had to look it up. That's one easy way to make sure you're only spending your time learning the most important, frequent things. 頑張れ!