[adrianN]

I can read about 6000 Japanese words. I can read NHK News articles with moderate effort if I have access to a dictionary. I'm not sure how many characters that is and I would be hard pressed to give meanings or complete lists of pronunciations for most characters in the words I recognize. Most sources I've read recommend against the study of characters in isolation. Some recommend ignoring characters completely until you're somewhat fluent, but I prefer reading real texts for self-study over working through textbooks.

[bayesian_horse]

For Japanese, I think that is good advice, especially because the characters often have Japanese or japanized pronounciations and are assisted by Hiragana.

In Chinese, writing characters, and knowing their meaning helps a lot more, I guess.