[MMM]

High school graduates will have learned, I believe, 2500 kanji by the time they graduate. There are at well over 10,000 kanji in Japanese, but it takes 2,000 to 3,000 to read a newspaper comfortably.

If you think you need to know all these kanji fluently to function in Japan, STOP WORRYING! I probably had a good handle (reading) of, hmmm...400-500 kanji when I moved there, and that was MORE than enough to get by. The most important ones I learned were place names and people's names when I got there (so I could read a map to take the train home) but those come quickly. I never read the newspaper, but they have bilingual news on TV. And, of course, English language newspapers.

My point is, kanji learning is a lifetime project. You can be done learning hiragana and katakana, but you will never end your kanji study...Japanese citizen or foreigner. Many Japanese game shows feature "read this Kanji" type quizzes. Fun to watch.