[steven]

Where are you getting this stuff from? Japanese is easier to speak than European languages... for whom? Maybe if I grew up in Hong Kong I could have some empathy for a statement like that, but even so that seems like such a sweeping statement.

I absolutely hate tests like JLPT and don't even want to bother giving them the money or satisfaction they want. I feel like i wasted my money on a couple of their books.

I didn't realize you were chinese and apologize for that. From your perspective why wouldn't Kanji be important? With that said, you were calling my learning experience biased... that may be so, but what about you?

"I was brought up in a pure Kanji environment-Hong Kong. No pinyin whatsoever. Just Kanji. And I can tell you that when kids here learn Kanji, 9 out of ten words are Kanji phrases they have never heard of before. I can guarantee that learning Kanji without first learning how to pronounce or use them is perfectly okay. There are tens of millions of successful examples here and there. "

I'm sure there are billions of successful examples, but have you looked at literacy rates for different countries around the world? There may be a corrolation between that method of thinking and literacy rates, but that is quite an assumption on my part and apologize if there are other reasons.