@prescribed order
The Ministry of Education has all the Kanji broken down to what year of school they should be learned in. I think that list is even sometimes at the back of Kanji dictionaries. hmmm, I wonder if it's on the net somewhere?

@kanji
Kanji is originally form China. Japan, I believe never did have an indigenous writting system. So they borrowed the Chineses while they were busy borrowing a bunch of other things.

Japanese Kanji are actually older forms than what China uses today. The Chinese has gone on and simplified many of theirs. Also, of course, some kanji are gonna mean different words. So Japanese "letter" will equal Chinese' "toilet paper"

Why not hiragana and katakana. .... ughhhh, too many words sound the same just like in English "pair" and "pear" so you'd have to pay more attention to context and actually it would take more time to read.

Way back when. Woman we're stuck to wrtting only hiragana, and men to kanji or katakana. a Kanji is a symbol and makes picking up the meaning of a sentence much quicker.

yes, learning to read and write is hell, but once you've gotten to a certain stage you are still in hell but that hell has a different feel to it and it's not so bad anymore.

@hiragana
hmmm this board is still having trouble with "a" and "ya"