Much easier to write than read? Japanese? Japanese? Are you kidding? Of course if you define read as 'read kanji' and write as 'write hiragana' you'll come up with that backwards answer, but it doesn't make any sense to define the two in different ways. Writing just hiragana is not 'writing japanese' in the same way that reading just hiragana is not 'reading japanese.'

Many Japanese themselves often forget how to write many kanji that they read often in daily life. Almost everyone who studies japanese can read far more than they can write...