What I learned today from TextFugu! I feel pretty damn accomplished! Like, I actually did something useful in my 14 years other than sit my butt down on this chair and waste my life on the internet. I learned the roles of the Japanese "alphabets", such as: Katakana: Used for foreign words Hiragana: Is used when the kanji is too difficult, so people just write it out in Hiragana, words with no kanji at all, particles to connect the words together(such as "and", "or", etc.), Suffixes, and Verbs & Adjective Inflections. Romanji: It's useless! Because you're reading Romanji right now, it's basically Japanese in English letters which isn't going to exactly help you at all. Kanji: Chinese characters that Japan adopted from China in the past and are used as vocabulary words. It's made up of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. You'll need to know at least 2,000 (2,500 - 3000 if you're going into academics there) if you want to be REALLY comfortable in Japan.