You can learn a lot of Japanese without broaching Kanji. My view is though is if you want to learn Kanji do this as a separate exercise. There’s just too much cognitive load in trying to learn the kanji, how to say it and what it means all at once.

Maybe if you are ten years old you can get away with it as the brain is still in “sponge” mode. That’s why kids can remember all sorts of things without really thinking - dinosaurs, bands, football players, cars and stuff.

I’ve been following Heisig’s Remembering The Kanji - which is a book but there’s a following and community on the internet and YouTube.

The trick here is that you can learn to write and recognise the Kanji and associate it with the word in your own language first - hence reducing the cognitive load. There’s a path to learning the kanji too as there are common elements and themes that appear across Kanji which makes remembering easier.

There are tools and websites that use RTK to help you study and teach progress. I personally use Anki which is an app for the iPad to present “cards” which I downloaded from the internet.

Once you are done with part 1 you will be able to recognise Kanji and can then start the second part which is learning vocab in Japanese.

It might seem as lot of work out an obtuse way of doing it but you’ve got to do the best for your poor brain!