hablo un poco de espa?ol tambien

trade you some japanese for some spanish, heh heh

oh, and some answers:

1. it's down to memory. the majority of my teachers are native speakers, and even they say that there isn't a set pattern to it.

2. copy it down and check a dictionary / the internet later. if copying it isn't possible, try to memorise how many strokes it has, or what its radical is (the component that determines what semantic field it belongs to).

so yeah, memory is key. there's not really a short cut to learning kanji. hope that helps.