I don't know how anyone can figure out this language :p I've had to spend like 3 days on one page in my kanji book to figure it out. Katakana was simple because all I had to do was memorize the characters. Then I could put them together and figure out the english word. But hiragana and kanji are totally different. For hiragana I have to remember the characters, sound it out, and try to figure out what the hell the word means. And kanji, wow, I don't know if I will ever figure out much of that. So I am hoping for now just to be able to get hiragana down, then I will know 2/3 things I need for Japanese (I hope) :p