memorizing japanese

I find memorizing Japanese particularly difficult. Since we haven't started memorizing by associating the sound of words with the kanji (Chinese characters), to me it is just a bunch of random sounds. Non-English speakers no doubt face a similar challenge when learning English, or any other alphabetic language for that matter. Knowing the kanji is helpful, but the differences in pronunciation and usage (the verbs especially tend to take different kanji than they would in Chinese) are still significant.

Are there any techniques anyone has for memorizing Japanese words?

I have had limited success with mnemonics.