Hi Marty, my name's Alex. I'm from Toronto, going to school in Montreal, and I plan on teaching English in Japan when I graduate (it would be even cooler to go as a pro musician, but this way is fine with me too). I recently started taking Japanese, and I know I'm getting ahead of myself with this question, but I can't help but wonder, how many kanji do you know, as a fluent foreigner? Approximately, of course.

I probably will be going to Japan in a little over 2 years, and have NO pretensions of getting fluent in that amount of time, but I feel it would be nice to build up a base of Japanese abilities, and then meet a Japanese girlfriend to teach me more :)

Believe it or not, since moving to Japan, my writing (by hand) of Kanji has decreased drastically! That`s due to always typing them on my cell or the computer and rarely having a reason to write them. I can read about 700 Kanji, and many more in combination. Get into Kanji early, you won`t be sorry. And be careful of what you learn from your girlfriend!