[steven]

Kyle that is truly impressive!

I used to cram kanji but I never got anywhere. After I started understanding everyday conversation and the like, I was able to start memorizing kanji with way less effort. That's not to say you can't memorize kanji without knowing how to speak much Japanese, it's just that knowing how to speak and knowign the usage of the kanji you study helps for long term memorization.

It's also kind of a weird thing to think about from an English speaking perspective, but learning kanji helps with speaking/listening, too. I'm sure Kyle knows that considering how much time he's putting into kanji. The more kanji you know, the better your chances of understanding a word that you've never heard before (even with minimal context). So while Kanji mostly helps your reading/writing it also has hidden benefits in that it can improve your understanding and speaking (I've sometimes said words that I've never consciously heard before and found out they were words later on... it's all about constructing words with kanji).

As far as the convenience stores go, they're probably asking this:
ポイントカードお持ちでしょうか？ pointo ka-do omochi deshou ka .
Which is asking if you have a point card (in a polite way).

I apologize that I can't help with the hotel/airplane thing as it's not something I regularly do so I wouldn't know what they usually say.