Learn the characters and their meanings first. Yep, all 4000 odd that you need for everyday reading. Sounds like madness? Well, get hold of Heisig's Remembering the Kanji book I and book III (book II deals with pronunciation and is nigh on useless) and start learning. There is a website with an SRS system to help you remember at
http://kanji.koohii.com/.
It may sound crazy, but you should be able to have learnt most of them in about two months if you study every day.
Check out
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com to find a guy who did just that!
Hey Luke!!
Thanks for sharing your materials in the forum, which is what REALLY helps people!!
I downloaded "Remembering the Kanji" books just for reference since I give online lessons and wouldn't use it or recommend it because there is no preocupation in choosing the kanjis necessary for daily life, which are 1945...If one knows that much it won't be a problem reading newpapers, magazines or books. Also, I think one should learn to write and read the kanji at the same time (Reading and understandig the kanji is the most important in my opinion, though. Unless one wants to become a "shodo" teacher I don't think it's so important to write the kanjis if even the Japanese forget them since computers do the job for us.hehe)
"but you should be able to have learnt most of them in about two months if you study every day"
Wow, I wish I could have done that!! I studied Japanese in college and for one year in Japan but still must work on my kanji...
If one is a genius I think that's possible. Still, reading and WRITING (This is the difficult part) is a daunting task even for the Japanese, who apply for the 漢字検定試験...
I once tried to contact the guy from the website you quoted (Not that I wanted to do a background check on him) but think really difficult that he could have accomplished that since reading and writing Japanese is a lifetime study. I believe, though, that anyone can get a good command of spoken Japanese in a couple of months (Which I did) but it takes a little more time to sound like a native in terms of grammar and expression. If one takes "accent and pronunciation" into account it is possible to add some more years.
Please note that I'm not trying to attack your method neither say it doesn't work but in my experience it takes more time to learn kanji properly.
Cheers!!