As for learning a language, there are 4 "skills" involved: speaking, listening, reading and writing. We group them all into one clump - which I think is a mistake. It is common to have different proficiency levels in each "skill". I've also forgotten a number of languages over the decades and I find that I lose reading/writing skill the fastest with languages that use other than Roman letters (such as Farsi, Arabic & Japanese). I can speak and read French, but if it is spoken, I'm lost.
Written Japanese is hard even for native speakers. Children are usually in high school before they've learned enough Kanji to be able to read a daily newspaper. And some Kanji are so rarely used that newspapers have to put furigana (the little "cheat sheet" or subtitles) alongside the ones that even adults are going to have trouble with.
Written Japanese is hard even for native speakers. Children are usually in high school before they've learned enough Kanji to be able to read a daily newspaper. And some Kanji are so rarely used that newspapers have to put furigana (the little "cheat sheet" or subtitles) alongside the ones that even adults are going to have trouble with.