Topic, roar. I presume this question has been asked like a million times, but here I go. I finished RTK1 (with ~90% retention) a few days ago. Going to keep reviewing for at least a few months. I also started reading Tae Kim's Grammar guide (I think I will be able to do it in few weeks, then revise a few times). Then this question popped into my head.

When should a student of Japanese language be able start reading Japanese texts, with some fluency (without having to check every second word in a dictionary) OR with training in mind?
I'm actually planning to start reading visual novels (voiced ones, to have some auditory aid) with AGTH, but I'm afraid I will use it as a crutch and won't actually learn anything.

So, what should a person like me (with no past experiences with Japanese language apart from few years of fansubbed anime) study after Tae Kim or can I just jump to reading? Or should I mine sentences from Core 2000? And note, that I have no urge to study writing or speaking (although I also do those, just not my primary objective) at the moment, because my main goal is able to read original language VNs.

Oh, and I'm studying alone, which means; no paid courses, nor speaking partners.

Have a read through this:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5110

This thread should be stickied, as so many people ask this question

Yes, it should be stickied, I'm surprised it's not.

Hm, reading.. as far as I can tell my reading skills are rather good and actually I have to thank this forum (which i will.. do, yeah, in some time ). See also this thread: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=7572

Reading is compared to listening and understanding what you heard, easy. It's a matter of vocab (lots.. core2k is not sufficient enough as far as I understood what I was told, duh) + grammar. The point about reading is, once you get through RtK1 having basically no vocab knowledge you still could *guess* the meaning of compounds; you would recognise every single meaning of every *single* kanji. Start as soon as possible (f.e. with Doraemon. That was fun to read. Or some Otsuichi Shoujo Manga -- i know this sounds stupid, but they are easy to follow I think.)

When should you start reading? Whenever you'd like. No matter how much you study beforehand, it's not going to prepare you for actually reading manga/novels/whatever.

I read on and off even now, and my vocab is only about 1k. True, I can't understand everything, but each time I try it gets easier and easier. If you can, er, magically acquire some .txt files of the novels you're interested in, you can mine vocab from Yomichan, which is an Anki plugin.

Read what you're interested in - it's much easier to stick through something that's hard but interesting, than plod through something that's easy but so boring you want to spoon your eyes out.

I personally am going through Kore 6k (slowly), plus going through at the least the DOBJG, and probably DOIJG too.

My personal opinion is that if you can read something (or use reading as study material) without getting bored because of how slowly you're progressing or how little you're understanding, then it's worth incorporating into your study. Don't try to force it too early, but don't get into the mindset that you're going to have to study for years and years before you can even look at a visual novel.

Now, I do think that if it takes you 2 hours to get through half a page, there are more efficient ways to study even if you are enjoying it.

I dunno what AGTH is, but if it's like Rikaichan for VNs then yeah, you will be using it as a crutch.

I've noticed that I've been using Rikaichan for a lot of webpages, and I just really forget what a lot of words are since I just stick in the English meaning in the sentence and then never bother to really learn it.

For example:
だからスポーツ観戦が大好きで
becomes
だからスポーツgame-watchingが大好きで in my mind.

I end up not knowing the kanji or the reading, unless I SRS it. On the other hand, you get to practice reading sentences so that except for vocab you can understand it, so there's a little give and take.

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I've been studying for almost 2 years now, and when I read, I alternate between slowly and steadily SRSing words and sentences and looking up what everything means, and just speed reading and trying to figure out everything through context. Studying grammar is helpful, but the flaw of grammar is that it has a sort of "structure of the day" instead of randomly embedding it into sentences, which is where reading native material helps. So go back and forth in between, figure out what you can learn, etc. and enjoy it. =)