[chryuop]

Everybody can read kanji, it is enough a dictionary at hand. Trust me, it takes me a whole day to read 1 page...I am not that advanced either.
But reading will get you used to recognizing the phrase structures, which trust me in Japanese are far from easy.
Everyone worries about kanji when you can easily translate them. But not always having the translations will make understanding the meaning easy. A typical phrase in Japanese book is longer at least 3 times one in English and it is easy to get lost.
Don't wait to know 2,000 kanji by heart, coz it is wasted time.