Yeah, myself I don't really rely much on mnemonics much for vocab since I think it requires more work to make them than is worth it. It's possible to just grind them into memory with Anki by repetitive failure, so I do that. Since I'm lazy. I mean, sometimes I use mnemonics if one comes to mind right away, but it's probably only happened for like 50 words in my whole deck.
And many of those are tied to other Japanese words since it's easier to find overlapping sounds of course within the language rather than linking it to English. Once you start getting used to the foreign bank of sounds, things get a lot easier ^_^
But hey, if you're using mnemonics and like them, I recommend adding a field to your vocab deck FOR the mnemonic and writing it down. You probably won't ever need to look at it, but if you ever have a major rep backslide pileup disaster, you're going to love the fact that all the mnemonics you worked hard on are only a click away, safe and sound and ready to be used again.
I'm glad you like Tae Kim! Are you using his "Complete Guide to Japanese" or the "Japanese Grammar Guide"? I only used the latter one, hehe, so I don't really know what the first one is like.
Since I scored so horribly on listening, yesterday I signed up for Japanesepod101 (I've known about it forever but was never compelled to try it since it seems kind of gimmicky), but hey it was actually kind of good. I started out on "Lower Intermediate" and it seemed perfect for my level. They recited this dramatic reading script thing, and I was so lost and floundering, but then they were like "Again, now slowly" and performed the whole thing about 2x slower, and suddenly I could understand most of it O_O So you're right, speed really does play a big factor XD But yeah I'm gonna continue doing a podcast there every weekday and see how it factors in to my daily schedule and whether it will be beneficial or not. I sure hope so.
頑張って!