[akavi]

Pitch accent in Japanese is deterministic based on the mora that is "accented". While it's true the effect of this accent "spreads" across the entire word, you only need to mark a single mora to know the effects word-wide.

> Reading hiragana is slow (and I've been reading hiragana for a long time)- it's slow, and mentally much harder than reading with kanji.

What's the ratio of hiragana-only text that you read compared to Kanji? And does the hiragana text uses spaces between words? My strong suspicion is "low" and "no", respectively. Familiarity breeds comfort with any writing system, and word breaks are a fabulous ergonomic tool for easing reading.

[Tor3]

When I started Japanese a long time ago I would read (small) children's books because all I could read was hiragana. With spaces, for the smallest children. And that was all I read and could read. And yet.. as soon as I could read various words with kanji, the reading got easier and faster.

[Suppafly]

>And yet.. as soon as I could read various words with kanji, the reading got easier and faster.

Could part of that be due to the fact that your vocabulary was also increasing at that time?

[Tor3]

No, it wasn't because of vocabulary, which has only very slowly increased over time. The reading difference is instant and very noticeable. I can't read hiragana fast enough (matching speech) to follow subtitles which are all in hiragana, for example, while I can if there's kanji (though only if I can read it, there's still lots I can't read). This can be changed forth and back and tested with sites like Animelon, for example.