I started learning to read Japanese with Hiragana first. MARU app has been very much the primary driver of helping me learn the symbols and sounds. Just constant practice and divorcing English, harder than it sounds, from the lessons has been instrumental. It's a good feeling when you can look at a sentence and sound out the symbols from memory or even recognize sequences of symbols without sound and know what word that is.
Kanji exists as symbols to represent certain things since Hira/Katakana isn't good enough for everyday writing. Apparently too tedious, LOL so the idea was to have certain symbols refer to words like colors, things, people etc... I mean when they decided to modernize they should have only one alphabet to teach their kids and simplified words. A wasted opportunity.
I have to wonder who the hell came up with this sh*t though!
Multiple alphabets with the same sounds? Multiple symbols with
indistinguishable sounds within the same alphabet too? di and ji, o and
wo. su and tsu.
Anyway, can't change the language alone so won't get sidetracked criticizing it heavily. Reading the symbols is a great step on the goal to general reading. Need to practice Katakana as well and keep expanding my vocabulary. There's a lot to learn outside of these even: Common phrases, grammar, particles etc.