I have the happy experience of seeing my son learning Japanese and English at the same time, and it’s bizarre how different it is. Learning the kana might be a bit harder, but now that he’s there he can read any word out loud correctly.

In English? Hoo boy. Knowing how you spell a word doesn’t help you at all with how it’s said. Then on top of that the names of the letters are completely different from how you sound them. It’s no surprise that phonics is something ‘important’ in the English language when the whole concept doesn’t exist elsewhere.