Why doesn’t Japanese just get rid of Kanji?

Thanks for taking the time to write that, I kind of didnt expect that answer. I also find Kanji useful; as my kanji and vocabulary grows I'm starting to be able to intuit meaning from new jukugo--and maybe half of the time even correctly guess how it's pronounced. After getting even just a little bit of experience with kanji reading in all kana is a painful experience; like the pokemon games for example. Cant tell you how many times I looked up a word in kana only to recognize I already know that word once I see the kanji in the dictionary.

It kind of reminds me of those Japanese on the street "can you write this kanji" interviews. Even though it's hard to remember how to write sometimes, everyone seems to recognize them easily enough.