Notes:
If you learn the two syllabaries or phonetic alphabets, you'll be able to read a lot of stuff and if you can read it phonetically, you can look it up in a dictionary.
If you just learn to RECOGNIZE the two syllabaries, you can look up the syllables and then look up the meaning.
By the way, Ramen is your friend. Think "Hot, delicious noodles in tasty broth. CHEAP."
But that last character? It's one of somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 kanji or Chinese characters you might run into. But take heart … a high school graduate's only expected to know about 2000 of them. Piece of cake, right?
It means "STORE" by the way. RA MEN YA – Ramen Store. Noodle shop.
