Can I just download Japanese into my brain, ala the Matrix??

[slr2moons]

Reading my issue of Zero Sum makes me long to resume my Japanese language studies. Especially since this magazine is aimed an an older audience, which means every kanji doesn't have handy furigana to tell me how to pronounce it and thus quite often inform me what word the kanji actually means. I informally know about 30 kanji, not counting numbers. And by "informally" I mean I know the most common pronunciation and meaning. (For those who don't know how Japanese works, kanji have a minimum of 2 pronunciations and sometimes as many as 10. Most have around 4 or 5, I estimate. There's no clues how to pronounce a kanji just from looking at it, like the $ sign doesn't have "dollar" written anywhere in it. You just have to know how to say it.)

Once upon a time, I learned a new kanji every day. I've tried to get back into studying over the years, but I lost the energy when I began working so much. All my brain power goes to lettering, and usually I'm too dead at the end of the day to try to learn something. :P But ohhhh, I wish I were bilingual right now...

I must laugh at the irony of purchasing this particular magazine. I wanted it because it's the mag for many outright or strongly-hinted BL/yaoi titles, like my beloved Loveless, and also 07-Ghost, and most famously Saiyuki. And with all those male/male romance(ish) stories, the main characters are all GORGEOUS. To other words, I bought Zero-Sum for the hotties. I'm a sucker for pretty boys, I admit it. :B So what's ironic about my issue chock-full of bishounen??? The first page of manga is filled with ojii-san. AKA grandpas. Men over 50. In fact, a pretty boy doesn't appear until page 11 of the manga, and then he's just one in a crowd. Haha! The joke's on me!! But at least the first-first page in the magazine is a fold-out full-color poster of the Saiyuki main character quartet. It's a calendar for June. Eeeheeheee! <3

If anyone is curious, that first manga chapter in the mag is "Ogamiya Yokochou Tenmatsuki", which I know because the title two-page color spread does have furigana on it. The manga doesn't have a Wiki English page that I can find. :P In this chapter, some guy in a suit is trapping all the ojiisan into playing cards, and he keeps grumbling about wanting the Ace of Spades, and getting stuck with all non-face cards in various suits. The one cute girl ended up the 8 of Hearts. Heh.