Kanji are characters which were originally adopted from the Chinese. Though similarities still exist, Japanese kanji have evolved and changed differently than their Chinese counterparts, and now have forms and readings all their own. Kanji are used for the core parts of a sentence: nouns and the root forms of verbs and adjectives. Hiragana are used as the "cement" between the kanji to indicate their relationship to each other, and to conjugate verbs.
You need to know around 2,200 kanji to read a Japanese newspaper. The study of kanji can be fascinating, however, and the more you study them the more sense they make (excepting the exceptions), making it easier to learn more.
This just barely scratches the surface, but here are a few of the easiest kanji of the 76 taught to first graders in elementary school:
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