Hi Jeff,
The multiple versions of written Japanese seems like it would make life extremely difficult for a non Native speaker. German is written pretty much like it is spoken, and it's related to English so I imagine it must be considerably easier to learn.
After getting a basic knowledge I found watching DVDs where I could switch from English to German, or watching TV series dubbed in German was a very good way to get the feel of the language, and learn "like a child." With repetition it starts to seep into the brain ;-)
I hope your posts encourage some people to learn Japanese, and I hope you do some bilingual photographic posts of your experiences.
All the best!
Yeah, kanji in particular are what makes the language difficult to read in the long run. You can actually learn the other two alphabets in a few days -- it takes a few months to become comfortable with them, but it's not too bad overall.
I'm actually going to talk about learning from TV series in one of my posts! It is such a great way to study. And actually one of the things that made me believe in their effectiveness was meeting people in Germany who spoke perfect English and had learned primarily from watching American movies and TV shows :P
Thanks for the comment! I would love to do some posts with pictures when I'm able to return to Japan for a visit!