@columbine: thanks for the list. That's not too far from what I was looking for, and it's already in table format, so it should be pretty easy to parse out into a format for a flash card program.
@CityofTrees: I meant to mention in my first posting that I'm studying Chinese and know about 1500 characters. I realize that kanji is not quite the same as Chinese (e.g. some characters are written differently, many characters have different meanings), but I don't fear kanji
I was surprised, however, to see that much kanji in food words. In my previous (and only) trip to Japan, I was expecting to have some vague idea of menus by reading the kanji. However, I was very disappointed and surprised to find almost no kanji on the menus. Does this not match other peoples' experience?