Man, Japanese is hard. I have to learn around 100 kanji for the exam in December on top of all the grammar and vocabulary. In fact, the language is so hard that many native speakers cannot read the newspaper. The kids in Japan go to school six days a week. What's the point of making your language so hard that even the native speakers cannot fully learn it? It just makes so little sense to me. But I do find it fascinating and really fun to learn. I like the way they put meaningful symbols together to form words. For example the two symbols which make up the word telephone (denwa) are the symbol for electricity and the symbol for speaking. The symbols for electricity and car make up the word for train (densha). Neat isn't it?