(2016-06-08, 6:44 am)Stansfield123 Wrote:(2016-06-06, 7:58 am)Aikynaro Wrote: Well, it's not necessary to know kanji to read, because furiganaI'm aware of furigana. But I'm interested in an alternative way to learn to read Japanese as it is commonly written.
I do read Japanese as it is commonly written - for instance, I'm currently reading a seinen manga series 第七女子会彷徨, which has almost no furigana, and recently finished the first two volumes of the LN 神様のいない日曜日, which is relatively generous with the furigana for a LN but the majority of words don't have any. I won't claim that I recognise 100% of those words, but I'm comfortable saying I have a high level of understanding.
The thing with starting out reading things with extensive furigana is that eventually you recognise the words without the furigana - like you don't need to parse every letter of an English word to recognise it as you read, you don't need to know the components that make up kanji as you read. I guess it would be like being able to read without being able to spell.
I do think that learning the kanji (i.e. how to write) at some point is necessary, but that point is far, far past where advocates of RTK etc. put it, even with a reading-focused study method.