I have that in Japan as well. Even worse, I DO recognize people mistakenly. That means, I think strangers are someone I know, and that happens all the time.
I still totally don’t get the point on how visualizing Jourms face helps me to recall a Kanji.
And nobody seems to be able to explain the process, so I have to make a test.
I used a photofit software to do that.
So that’s my Jourm 
Still no idea what to do with him now.
i think it’s just an aspect of context which some people use to help remember stuff
in my mind’s eye Jourm has a very specific stance (looming with a bit of a hunch), and for some reason i have a very clear view of his hands (big, thick skin from physical work, ingrained dirt). it doesn’t serve any purpose, it’s just part of the gestalt which comes up when i think Jourm. and as it seems that for many people faces are a central aspect of a person, i imagine people have relatively clear images of Jourm’s face in their mind
That’s 当たり前
My question is still HOW does a visualization works for them to memorize things (what stage of memorization and memorizing what exactly).
It is a question of detail and not a general question I have.
I want to know it because maybe this is the reason why I can’t write Japanese.
Maybe I lack a function.
If I know what’s missing exactly I can make a tool for that, a prosthesis for my brain so to say.
But to do that I need to know what tool I need, what that tool has to be able to do to be more precise.
Memory works better when it has a connection to the five senses. Sight, hearing, touch, scent, taste. That’s why the mnemonics encourage you to use all your senses to remember a kanji. The more vivid the emotional and sensory connection the more likely you are to remember.
Could you please try to explain that to me like you would explain the act of “seeing” to a blind person?
My toolbox for memorization obviously don’t has that concept and does not need it.
For me a Kanji is nothing more than a concept, it is pure language to me.
Even if I make reviews, there is a certain area in my brain that feels active and it is an entirely different area from what feel active when I would indulge in a visual daydream.
I only need the words leader, height ten feet and the Kanji either pops up in my brain or I write it directly on the paper in that exact moment, leader = ninben, height = 丈, than ok, maybe at this point if I can’t remember the reading (but I usually do without mnemonic) I could enter my feeling of relief because I recognize that Jourm is that fantastic tall handsome leader with a halberd standing on a hill in the sunset etc. and I always knew he is a hero in reality etc. etc.
Is that how it works for you?
Lol, sadly I’m not a poet
i don’t think there’s any direct connection between being able to imagine Jourm’s face and learning kanji which use him in their mnemonic.
when we learn stuff, it is really helpful if we can place that new thing in context. more context allows us to remember things more easily.
in particular when we’re just starting out on learning kanji, and probably don’t have much understanding of japanese either, we have almost zero context to connect the new kanji with. the mnemonics are little tools which help us create context. my brain, it latched on to the description of Jourm as tall and a farmhand, and conjured up an image of hands. it linked the sound じょう to that image. there, i’ve got context.
it is however artificial context. which is why it’s important to start reading and creating natural context.
but there is nothing specific about Jourms face which makes it particularly special as context. except possibly that in people who can imagine faces, faces tend to be an important aspect of how they imagine people.
But that’s not necessary.
Explaining that is easy
I would suggest not focusing on how a specific memory technique works for others, because “visualizing Jourm” doesn’t work for everyone.
If you can write in your native language without difficulty, there is no reason you couldn’t also do so with kanji (excluding the occurrence of a brain injury after learning to write your native language).
As you know, recognition is not the same as recall. It is likely that you can’t write kanji because you only have recognition, not recall. Some recall is natural and requires no conscious thought, typically because you already have enough base memory to build from. But kanji are new to your brain, so you must build the database upon which recall (i.e. reconstruction) can occur.
I would suggest you start by drawing the radicals, just as you practiced writing the letters that make up “boisterous” when you were in grade school.
It seems that nobody can answer my question that’s very interesting thank you actually.
Anyway it is important for me to understand how recalling and memory works precisely because I am on a quest to pass the Kanken level one and for that, it would save a lot, like a hell lot of time to be precise on the methods.
I just don’t know what more there is to explain to you. Someone already tried to explain from a neurological perspective why this technique works and you wouldn’t accept it.
More types of connections (emotional, sensory etc) to a memory = more neuronal pathways = stronger memory.
There is no way to get deeper than this without wading further into neuroscience.
Thank you really, it is just a very general statement and I would like to make a method to remember all the Kanken 1 Kanjis.
So general statements don’t help me for that purpose, even there is of course nothing wrong with what you say.
Neuroscience (at least for my purpose) is entirely useless because it can’t obviously give you a tool box to memorize things better.
Interesting, I have aphantasia, and I recognize faces better than I remember names 
At this point I’ve forgotten most of the mnemonics, but they did help initially. I just tried to remember the story told by the mnemonic. If I remember correctly, I would stare at the kanji and the radicals it was composed of, repeating the story in my head.
I don’t have aphantasia (I mean who knows, right?) but personally Jourm, Mrs. Cho, etc etc never helped me at all. Back when じょう was Joseph Stalin that was a bit easier since I at least didn’t have to imagine a completely new character, but even so the “person = kanji reading” seemed random to me. The scenes that the mnemonics would describe were pretty hit or miss and didn’t seem to have anything in common (Mrs Cho is out here throwing nails on the road, but also she’s a fan of butterflies? ok).
Anyway, since the end result is the same even if the cause is different, I figured I’d just mention that it was a huge help when I started noticing that certain kanji with similar elements often shared a reading. Wanikani mentions this a few times, like “when you see the 工 radical, the kanji often has an on’yomi reading of こう”, but it doesn’t go into a huge amount of depth. It’s called 形声 and a simple example would be:
(in-depth explanation here)
Once I noticed this, if I ever came across for example, a new kanji with 丁 and the ちょう reading, or 工 and the こう reading, I wouldn’t pay attention to the mnemonic whatsoever. It helped alleviate a lot of frustration. If that kind of thing is more compatible with your personal mental wiring, maybe it’ll help you as well.
There is a book about that, the 漢字音符字典.
It is an important tool to pass the Kanken 1 and was sold out for a while being sold second hand for up to 40.000 Yen on amazon and mercuri.
Now there a new edition will be released soon and I am going to write more about it once my pre order arrives.
That’s btw another example of the unconscious (is it?) mystification of the difficulty of Japanese besides the negation of the pitch accent. My language teacher told us about it once, but he was very eager to point out, that in the end you have to memorize the reading because there are exceptions. It might be an unquestioned strategy from previous days to prevent common people to have an too in depth knowledge of Kanjis and thereby being able to question authorities. You know, something like the Catholic church using Latin in their masses etc.
Is this your theory or your language teacher’s? The reason that you have to look up the reading in order to be sure is just because 形声 kanji are derived from Chinese and came to Japan over many hundreds of years as the official language of China shifted and Japan added the new readings to their inventory instead of replacing them (see: 呉音・漢音・唐音・慣用音). There’s no conspiracy here. Just one of the many disorganized ways that the Japanese writing system (and therefore language) has evolved over time.
That’s my theory of course. Not too serious btw.
It is just interesting to find out how many really important aspects are not being taught to foreigners or dumbed down to something useless.
I don’t know that phenomenon in other languages and I think, yes, it has to do with the concept of Japanese of wanting to see themselves as special (Nihonjinron).
I just don’t think it is a conscious concept and the fact that everyone studying for the Kanken level 1 needs that book and is willing to spend 40000 Yen on it while other people see passers of the level one as “geniuses” with a “talent” to learn, well yes, experience tells me, that you are limiting yourself with the concept you have about yourself.
Anyway, I am going to prove that it is ONLY about methods and not talent, if you can wait for a couple of years I can tell you if my hypothesis is correct 
In the end, what I want to say is, that the teacher actually explained the concept but did not call that 形声, because that would be too difficult for us.
But instead he explained enthusiastically about the percentage they make out of all Kanji, saying that not all of them are 形声 and ending the whole drama about it with the famous 日本語は奥深い～, you know, that thousand yard stare and strange timbre all included.
Works for any topic that’s considered elite culture.
In that case, you know you found something important! Bingo! Go to a bookshop asap and find the information is the best you can do, second best is to listen to Dogen and Matt, worst is, to accept that and store that information as: “not important for people like me”.
Same works in the West as well of course, just drop “phono-semantic character” and most people sport that thousand yard stare.
There’s a talking snake. Apep is an Egyptian snake god.
Ah, you changed that mnemonic! That’s why I didn’t get that at all.