Quote Originally Posted by Anatoli View Post
With Japanese I do find new with the characters I already know that I need to check the readings to be sure. The fact that words with the same meaning, same characters can be read in different ways is especially confusing. Why 泡 can be awa and abuku? 故郷 kokyō, kyūri and　furusato? Sorry, only quick examples, may not be perfect.

When you have a cluster of characters belonging to different words, you have to start wondering if they are components of words or separate words, so a good style dictates to use kanji sparingly (I am quoting a Japanese person here), so kanji does not always help to get the meaning quickly but vice versa.
I personally have never seen readings like こきょう、and ふるさと　being both possibly read from 故郷 as a problem. I mean I get the basic meaning in either case so it really does not matter what the intended reading is I suppose.

Overall in general I would say I have developed a sense for what Kanji readings are suppose to be. Like I just know from the sound of words like 率直 that it is read そっちょく not そつちょく, and from experience that it is not りつちょく　or りっちょく. I can see how you may feel it is confusing, but with the help of an electronic dictionary, learning the distinctive word pronunciations quickly has never been a problem (at least for me). For me, I have always found (some) Japanese grammar and learning to use the proper word for the proper circumstance, or situation to be the hardest part of the language, but that could be said for any language i suppose.

About the sentences that seem like endless streams of Kanji, I find those only to be present in formal documents where the sentences are long and complicated anyway, such as government stuff, policies, titles for sections, departments etc. etc.... i.e. crap that nobody really wants to read or pay attention to anyway if they don't have to.