Thank you Tim and Ryoko. I most certainly appreciate the advice, and yes Ryoko, debates will be my place to go if I want to get more answers to my questions...Thank you :). Tim, your insight is exactly in a nutshell the answer to my question. I had no idea on how to figure out the importance of written Japanese, and thought that Hiragana and Katakana will get my by after I had some conversational (Spoken) japanese under my belt. I too also saw Kanji as daunting, and knew that I had to tackle it, but with fear in my acknowledgement of this task. I am a native Spanish speaker and learning English wasn't bad when I approached it by learning the spoken part of it first. Then again, there's no character learning when you perfect your writing. I will definitely look for that book as take your advice as golden. Thank you all!

Hey there. Hola. Just wanted to put my two cents in... As you probably researched already, there are three writing systems (not counting romaji). I actually wanted to learn how to write because I thought it looked cool (I know, kind of a lame reason but ya). For the first month or so learning Japanese, I didn't focus on learning the writing system that much. I learned survival Japanese which is doable without the kanji, hiragana, and katakana. Anyways, After a while, I noticed that I wasn't really learning that quickly although I did learn hiragana and katakana along the way. But learning kana is not really that beneficial. It's mainly used for grammar. You can't really read anything in Japan with it. So I decided to start learning kanji so I could stop being so illiterate. I use an app called wanikani (it's really great). What I noticed is that by learning the kanji, all of the words start to make sense. It's really weird. In my four months of study, I have pretty much surpassed my colleagues at work who have lived in Japan for years (they skipped out in learning kanji). Some even have Japanese girlfriends/boyfriends. It's really crazy. Although kanji may seem tedious (there's like 2000 you need to know), it's really THE best shortcut there is to learning Japanese, a language that is so different from romance languages. You'll also start to realize, after memorizing a few hundred kanji and a few thousand vocab words, that the journey is surely a long one. It's not something that is achievable within a few months. It will take years upon years before one gets to a fluent and usable level. My suggestion is to practice speaking, along with reading, writing, and listening. You really can't do one without the other. Oh and yea, Genki is a great book. Buy it. It has many fundamental vocab and grammar you need to know. Anyways, sorry for the long message. But I do hope I helped lol. Good luck! Gambatte!! 頑張って！

*es el lugar en el que

Hola, en mi opinión, sería mucho mejor subir esto en "debates" ya que aquí es un lugar en el que escribes algo en japonés para recibir correcciones.

Arigatou Tomoe-san! I will definitely look into "Genki 1" and into getting some tutoring, but your advice is honest and well taken. Will keep your info and advice in mind. Thank you for the encouragement as well.