Japanese Kanji

Kanji are the logographic characters borrowed from Chinese and adapted into the Japanese writing system over centuries. There are 2,136 in the official Jōyō list but functional literacy starts much earlier than that. Most learners find that the first 500 to 1,000 kanji unlock a disproportionate amount of real reading ability. The learning curve is steep at the start and flattens considerably once you have enough characters to start recognizing patterns.